


Adronitis

by inK_AddicTion



Category: Guardians of Childhood - William Joyce, Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Amnesia, Blood, Cavity - Freeform, F/M, Hair Pulling Kink, Light Femdom, Mild description of torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-19
Updated: 2016-01-17
Packaged: 2018-04-20 15:34:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 31,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4792880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inK_AddicTion/pseuds/inK_AddicTion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Struck by the realisation that the Nightmare King is in love with her, Toothiana prepares to rescue him from his Nightmares. However, once she finds him, she discovers that his mind has already been broken, and he does not remember her. Is it possible to fix a man who was never quite whole in the first place?<br/>(Request challenge for Cassie) (the oneshot this continues from is now attached so this is a whole story)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Original oneshot

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Cassie/HeadsofScwab](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Cassie%2FHeadsofScwab).



> So this is the request challenge for Cassie, the prompt being Cavity with a happy ending. It will be a chapter fic because I'm trash.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is the cavity oneshot that Adronitis continues from.

Toothiana, Queen of the Tooth Fairy Armies, is born a little girl much like any other in a small village in India. She is a small child, dark of hair but bright of eye, tearing about with the other children her age shrieking with laughter. The deep jungle is nearby, and old women gather the children close around the fire, and tell stories of gamboling apes with the eyes of greedy men leering between the broad-leaf trees and tangling vines, and a Watcher tall and dark who kidnaps bad children who dare wander too far off the winding paths. Toothiana is a fearless child who laughs in the face of such childish danger, and spurs her playmates' admiration with her lack of concern.

"What about the Watcher, Ana?" "Why aren't you scared of the Watcher? He'll come take you away." "You'll be sorry then, Ana!"

"My mother would save me," Toothiana brags, and the children sigh and roll their eyes, because everyone knows that Toothiana's mysterious mother is long dead. But Toothiana knows the real truth; she has met her mother, a beautiful woman with the wings of a great emerald bird, who holds her close in her arms as they swoop over the treetops together; her daughter idolises her. When she is very young, Toothiana often questions why her mother doesn't come down and show the people of the village Toothiana is no liar, that her mother truly is something more than human. She strokes Toothiana's cheek with a feathery pennon, her eyes sad, and tells Toothiana of the Watcher, who whispers in the ears of scared people and makes them fear what they do not know.

"I hate the Watcher!" Toothiana declares, and her father laughs, swinging her up in his arms. "My little warrior queen, Ana. You can't fight Fear for them."

That is a long time ago, now. Toothiana remembers when she hated him very well, every moment of him is etched in her memory. She can never forget.

* * *

Toothiana grips the bars of the cage, unable to stop shivering, caught in the relentless claws of fear. The monkeys gambol and scream around the cage, digging their little clawed hands into the bars, trying to reach Tooth's tender skin, their wicked eyes flashing. Tooth has never been more scared in her life, with her father lying bleeding and silent on the ground- why isn't he moving? Moving to help Mummy, shrieking as the monkeys' clever fingers rip out her glorious feathers, matting them with blood and pain, in agony.

Tooth shouts for her mother, but she is too far gone to hear her, and the laughing monkeys cluster round her mother's faltering body with cruel tormenting jabs that make the ailing Sister of Flight wail in pain.

Tooth screams. No one can hear her. A painful tickling sensation makes her sob, and she looks down to see feathers, soft with down, pushing their way from underneath her skin. Tooth recoils in horror- and that is when she sees him.

He is a tall shadow in the darkness; the Watcher. His eyes gleam yellow like rippling pennons of flame and his intangible form wavers like smoke on the wind. He is staring directly at her, and as he does, Tooth drowns in the rush of terrified awe he brings- her heart pounding, palms slick, the monkeys and her parents fading into the background. Tooth is only dimly aware of the feathers she can feel brushing against her skin, the new trembling wings tentatively testing the air for the first time. She is transfixed in the power of the Watcher's eyes.

A fanglike smirk curves in the dark; impossibly, the cage's door clicks open. Tooth blinks rapidly in surprise and gratefulness; her feathers flutter.

Fly, a silken voice purrs, half-thought, half-heard in the back of her mind, dark and cold like the shadows of the Moon, and before she knows what she is doing, Tooth is erupting from the cage in a hurricane of rainbow feathers, shooting up, into the sky.

She is only twelve, and terrified. She never forgets.

* * *

The next time she is crouching on the outskirts of the village she used to live in, watching her old friends compare the treasures she has left them. The jade green of her feathers blend her perfectly into the humid shade of the jungle she hides in. Her precious tooth box is around her neck; she grips it nervously.

Tooth edges forward, half wondering- could she see them? Just- to say hello? It has been so long since Tooth talked to anyone.

The sun goes behind a cloud; the shadows deepen. A prickling chill ruffles her feathers, and Tooth, attuned to her instincts, glances around. A shape draws out of the dark- an inky figure of absolute blackness, yellow eyes. Tooth swallows, she remembers the last time she saw the Watcher vividly.

The teeth split into a cold smirk. The Watcher shakes his head, slowly, disapprovingly, like a tutting parent. Tooth retreats into the jungle.

She is fourteen, and so alone. She never forgets.

* * *

The Monkey King is whimpering with terror under her blade, which is held to his thick neck. His rank body stinks with the sour odour of fear. The animals of the jungle pace around Tooth, eyes burning with fury, jaws slavering and ready to rend in defence of her. Tooth, animal herself, hisses at the captive King, her feathers bristling in disgust. She loathes this wretch, hates every inch of his repellent fur, wide dull eyes, vapid stupidity.

She raises her sword, ready to decapitate the filth and end this hunt once and for all, but a flicker of shadow catches her eye. There is a familiar tingle running down her spine, causing her feathers to puff nervously. The Watcher is here.

Tooth is immediately aware of him, the electric taste of his presence is heavy everywhere, low and deep like the threatening rumble of stormclouds. But the lazy golden stare - half-lidded and hungry like a prowling tiger - is not fixed upon her but the squirming lump of matted fur beneath Tooth's sword.

Tooth glances between the Monkey King and the elusive figure. It is difficult to look at the Watcher, for his form is one of the shadows. Blinking, Tooth makes the connection. Her crest lifts silently in surprise. The Watcher is not here for her, today he dines of the taste of the Monkey King's fear. She cannot say why she knows he is feeding, but there is something inescapably starved in those yellow eyes, and she remembers the spine-chilling, satisfied smirk once the Watcher is done all too well, the smirk of a predator filled.

She digs the swordpoint into the gibbering monkey's neck, gazes in fascination as the Watcher's form solidifies slightly in answer. She strains her eyes, fools herself into seeing the tall, lean shape of a man, perhaps, spiked hair, those dangerous yellow eyes, sharp smile like a blade against the blackness, inclined forward, as if the Watcher cannot bear to pull himself away from the source of his meal. Tooth's breath catches.

The tiny, barely audible sound is all it takes to rip the moment, and the Watcher notices her observing him. The lazy smile becomes a hideous snarl, baring every one of his sharp teeth, and before she can blink, shadows swarm and the Watcher disappears, the lingering sensation of panic his presence evokes fading.

Dazedly Tooth allows the Monkey King to scramble away, perhaps as a peace offering, perhaps to draw the Watcher back again as the animals immediately pounce on the pathetic creature, making him howl and scream in terror and pain. She knows she was not supposed to see the Watcher.

She thinks he is beautiful. She never forgets.

* * *

Toothiana meets the Guardians, following a little girl's knocked out tooth to the Lunar Lamadary and a surprise attack from the monkeys. They give her a name.

Pitch.

Pitch Black.

The malicious Nightmare King seems unlike her Watcher, cold, cruel, certainly, but she has never sensed true evil about him. She listens to the glowing boy's troubled silence when the rambunctious bandit North tells tall tales of the pervasive trickery of the Nightmare King, and thinks perhaps she is not the only one.

"Pitch Black," she whispers into the night, tasting the name on her tongue. The shadows flicker, she swears for a moment she sees yellow eyes blink in the gloom.

She is confused. She never forgets.

* * *

At the battle at Punjam Hy Loo, the palace of the Sisters of Flight, she sees his face. His skin is the colour of smeared charcoal, his lips are thin and black like snakes and the teeth they hide are sharp enough that Tooth wonders how his lips are not cut to ribbons by them.

He is cold and cruel and gloating, and he moves fluidly like a jungle cat, smooth lines and dark sneers. He calls to her desperately to answer his plea- remove his humanity, remove what makes him feel.There is something personal, something more in his eyes- and she recalls vividly the pain of losing her parents, the weakness and terror of being all on her own, struggling to survive in the forest, her only companion irregular visits from winking gold eyes in the dark and a lazy smile when her fear holds her paralysed.

His eyes, in this light, are gold like burning fire, ringed by silver like the timeless eye of the moon. They are open, vulnerable, almost, as they meet hers, "Don't you see?" She could do it, too, with the help of the great winged elephant, take away all that makes him a man and reduce him to nothing more than a shadow of his former self. She stares at him coldly, her Watcher, unveiled in all of his jagged, broken magnificence, and thinks sadly- I could not.

He has taken a girl captive, for show, perhaps, because his hold on her is weak and he seems ready to give her up, but he has her, anyway, and Toothiana must protect the children. She allows herself to fight against him, tests his strength and courage with her blades. She likes what she finds. His dark manipulation yields him potent allies, and his shadows bat away any who attempt to draw near him, wearing the Guardians down. He is clever. She thinks that she admires, if nothing else, her Watcher's ability for ruthlessness.

She thinks, perhaps, that even she is not cruel enough to take her Watcher's black heart away from him. The cut-glass magnificence of the dethroned King lying, supposedly defeated, against the stone, but with defiance and rage and fear still alight in his eyes is enough to make Tooth's crest tremble- she remembers how it feels to be caged, trapped, with only that last, primal instinct, fear.

Tooth is still fighting. She never forgets.

* * *

Tooth is accepted into the Guardians. It feels uncomfortable to suddenly be part of a family, for they are undoubtedly one, after so long alone. She doesn't fit very well with them, but they are relentless in their welcoming acceptance, and eventually even Tooth's feathers are smoothed. They are a mental pressure in her head, North, a clever magician with the endless turns of creativity humming away inside his mind, Bunnymund, eclectic and strange to hide an ancient sadness, Ombric, wise and tired, the girl Katherine, a font of scrawling words and lines, Nightlight, gentle and unassuming, and even the Sandman, thoughts slow and rippling like the movement of constellations through the darkness of space.

She finds the Sandman's company soothing. He does not talk, nor demand, and his slow, circular thoughts ripple with light and inherent goodness, a balm to the subversive thoughts of cloaking darkness and hungry yellow eyes that follow her. If perhaps, the gold of his skin and the gleam of his teeth in his smile make Tooth's heart jump in unexpected ways and her mind leap to dark shapes between the tree trunks, the Sandman does not question it- even once, he lends her a picture-thought, sharp and vibrant like citrus fruit.

A tall man robed all in black upon a horse as inky as he. Golden eyes like flames out of a grey face, the bladed smile, a taunting voice, "So you are the one the Moon sent against me?"

She treasures the snippet; his eyes, mercurial and teasing, reveal a lightness of heart fully absent from her own memories of his stare. Once, she thinks, Pitch Black was happy. He is not now.

Tooth wonders if she will ever see him happy again. She thinks she might like to try.

She never forgets.

* * *

They fight many times over the years, Pitch Black and the Guardians. Tooth grows used to attacking him, hurling herself at him with her blades flashing and scythelike wings ready to slash and harm. She never grows tired of the way he moves, dancing out of the way fluidly like smoke over water. Sandman is often the only one who can land a hit, and Tooth doesn't mind that much, though it frustrates her. She supposes it is difficult to explain why she does not really want to harm Pitch Black, she finds him too fascinating, like a puzzle she wants desperately to unpick.

He is complex, there are so many layers to him. He is so much more than an evil villain.

She never forgets.

* * *

Tooth has been a Guardian for centuries now.

She still flies with her fairies. She cannot get over seeing the children, contented and happy as she never was. She loves seeing the evidence of her job paying off, protecting every one of those precious memories is a gift unlike any other. It's harder to direct them when she is in the field herself, but she wouldn't give it up for the world.

The meeting happens in an abandoned alley in Dubai.

He is slinking among the rubbish bins, insubstantial as a whisper. He is leaning close to a small girl, skinny and terrified with long dark hair and bright eyes. He does not speak, nor move, but just...watches.

Watcher in the Dark, she thinks, alights carefully on top of the roof. The girl's eyes stare glassily right through her, and Tooth feels a pang in her heart. The girl is beyond the work of good memories now, she no longer believes in the Tooth Fairy, now, she is at fear's mercy.

"Come to chase me away?" he asks, voice hard and sharp, and Tooth shakes her head quietly, unable to speak.

All she knows is that she does not want to rupture this moment, she and him, for once not engaged in a duel for their lives, but standing, taut and very much at war, over the shaking body of a little girl beyond Tooth's aid.

He dismisses her, and sinks to his knees beside the girl, bending close to whisper in her ear. Tooth cannot hear what he says, but whatever it is, it is enough to make the little girl startle in terror, and leap to her feet, racing away into the brightly lit metropolis. Tooth considers following her, but then she sees Pitch, a curious ache in his gold eyes, staring at her. She hesitates, somehow aware of the tentative accord between them, and knows if she mistrusts his action and checks, it will be shattered once and for all.

Tooth remains where she is. Pitch's smile is cold and deadly, but his eyes are softer than Tooth has ever seen them before as he watches the little girl leave.

The look in his eyes. She never forgets.

* * *

..

* * *

She pretends she doesn't avoid him after that, but it's almost the truth. She knows he is everywhere, she sees him in every lurking shadow, every skittering spiderbite, every gleaming flash of yellow. Her work keeps her so very busy, and eventually Tooth realises it has been over four hundred and forty years since she last left the ruins of Punjam Hy Loo, which she calls her Tooth Palace.

Then the summons come, and Tooth listens with a sick feeling of dread mixed with sharp shards of excitement when North tells her the Boogeyman has risen again. It can't be wrong that she wants to fight him again, can it?

Then she feels the distress from her fairies- and watches through a million tiny eyes as great, dangerous Nightmares made of inky sand swallow up her little fairies, plunging them into an icy trap of darkness and fear.

-tallman-blackhorse-goldeyes-"soyouretheone-themaninmoon-senttome?"-

Pitch Black is stealing the teeth, is attacking Tooth directly, and it never feels like a greater betrayal. Her Watcher- she had always had an illicit sort of fondness for him, protecting her ever since that cage's door mysteriously broke open so long ago, but the attack abruptly sours her, turns her heart cold with hate.

He has gone too far. Tooth hates him. The past doesn't matter now.

* * *

"SHUT UP OR I'LL STUFF A PILLOW WITH YOU!" He roars to her fairies, and Tooth notes absently in the back of her mind she once might have been flattered Pitch considered her feathers soft enough to sleep on. All she feels now is the weakness stealing into her bit by bit, the dreadful fear; and thinks- why, why. Tooth has never been more terrified.

* * *

He shoots Sandy cold in the back and Tooth feels her heart turn to ice. Pitch is a vile creature, it's obvious to her now, Tooth wonders why she ever questioned it. She feels Sandy's absence in her mind like a hole ripped in her heart. No, no. He can't be gone- but the slow, warm presence of the Guardian of Dreams has been swallowed up forever in that hideous black sand. Tooth has never felt more alone without her oldest friend beside her.

* * *

He gloats, powerful and assured in his nearly-victory, and Tooth is taken aback by the venom rush of hatred she feels for him- there is nothing uglier than evil in it's truest form, which is what Pitch Black has become. She is disgusted to breathe the same air as him, the sight of his twisted yellow fangs makes her stomach churn with nausea. There is nothing uglier than Pitch Black.

* * *

Pitch manipulates Jack like a puppet on a string, and it rips Tooth's heart, but she turns away. There is no turning back from Pitch Black. Jack has destroyed Easter...why didn't he just attack Pitch? It is what Tooth would have done. Tooth has never been surer of anything in her life.

* * *

Tooth is too weak to fly any longer. She tries and falls to Jack's feet, embarrassingly. He laughs it off and helps her up, but all Tooth can feel is the dragging weariness that beckons her to give in, give up. Tooth is too weak to fight it now. Tooth is too weak to fight at all. She has to stand by while a child attempts to protect her from Pitch Black and feels like laughing until she cries. Tooth can't fight.

* * *

The black sand turns golden under the children's fingertips, and Tooth watches Pitch's horror with a decadent satisfaction. Sandy reforms from the gold, and the hole in Tooth's mind welcomes him with an abject relief, the cool, slow movement of his thoughts, stirred to an alien anger that Tooth has rarely experienced from him before, but she approves heartily as she watches Sandy lash Pitch expertly, dragging the Boogeyman to his feet. Tooth just wants to see Pitch hurt.

* * *

Pitch is nothing more than a vicious shadow, and he is punished like the animal he is. She punches him, hard enough that one of his vile teeth fly out across the ice and blood pours from his gum. He gives her a look, and Tooth scorns him with a glare. She doesn't care. Pitch is nothing more than a hated enemy.

* * *

He screams when his own nightmares drag him away, and there is panic and terror in his eyes, wide with pleading, but Tooth is immune to his stare. She feels no pity, no sympathy for him. He deserves this, he brought it fully upon himself. Let the nightmares rip him apart, let them destroy him. He knows what they will do, she can see it in his eyes. Tooth thinks coldly the tears in his eyes are the first of many.

* * *

..

* * *

Weeks have passed.

The Boogeyman has been shut away.

The Watcher in the Darkness is defeated.

Finally, Tooth manages to restore order to her Palace. It takes a long time to get all the teeth back in place and even longer to catch up on the backlog of teeth needing to be collected from children. But belief is as high as it has ever been, and Tooth is happy.

Or she should be, but there is something niggling at her, like a twitching feather, or a misplaced tooth.

A tooth.

She frowns, closes her eyes, concentrates on the powers that alert her to newly fallen teeth everywhere. The tooth is difficult to get a hold on. Somewhere near Burgess, but she can't get a clearer read on it that. "Girls," she calls, "Burgess." She hears the buzz of wings and an affirmative chirp. One of her girls is after the tooth, and Tooth turns back to her job with relief.

It's a little while before the fairy returns, but when she does, an ominous silence spreads across the Tooth Palace, and everywhere across the world, the fairies' wings stop beating for a brief moment as Tooth's heart skips a beat.

Nestled in her palm is an ugly shark like tooth. Pitch's tooth.

She presses it into her palm, but all she can see are flashes of her own memories- but wait, they are not hers, they are...Pitch's memories of her...

She is terrified, and he sets her free. She is alone, and he comes to her. She is beautiful, and he protects her. She is confused, and he reassures her. She is fighting, and he gives her something to fight against. She is sad, and he tries to make her happy (he doesn't think he succeeds). She is complex and intricate, and he loves her mercurial temper. She looks at him and in her eyes there is a gaze that whispers of a shared heart and a dream he wishes they both share, in her eyes there is a thousand possibilities.

The realisation slams into her like a freight train.

Toothiana has forgotten.


	2. Original oneshot

There are nightmares beneath the skin of the earth, festering like infection. Things that do not belong to Earth skulk under the crumbling soil; grotesque turgid bodies wriggle from the searing sunlight like well-fed oily slugs. Mouths gape searchingly out of the yawning crevices of that secret, hidden underworld of phantoms, eyeless, heartless, thoughtless, seeking sustenance with sucking gulps of sour, stinking air, suffused with sulphur. These slick, eternal creatures are called _Fearlings,_ and they are subjects of a puppet king.

There are other creatures in the darkness, of course. Hollow men with blank eye sockets and gaping, mortal wounds like lipless smiles lurch, lead dripping from their toothless grins and amorphous feet, swallowed in possessive shadow, dragging. It is not difficult to see where the human preoccupation with _zombies_ comes from, looking at the _Nightmare Men,_ stumbling out of long, tall spaces like closets and cupboards and end rooms. Their cousins the Fearlings prefer the smaller, cavelike spaces, sock drawers and U-bends, oozing like pollution.

And then there are the _Dream Pirates,_ slow, slinking, skittering, lizards chasing through deep graves of leaves. These are the creatures that lurk beneath a restless child's bed, or twine long, hungry fingers around knotty hair and _tug._ Impatient, hungry creatures, claws pricking tender flesh as they lean over a paralysed sleeper's helpless body, sucking dreams from the verdant crop of their trouble-plagued mind.

Lastly, there are the new additions, the snort and stamp of a sharp hoof against clattering concrete, fiery citron eyes and dagger-teeth poised to rend and tear. Flighty and skittish, the _Nightmares_ are relentless and persistent, outrunning every desperate mortal gulping down feverish mugs of coffee to stave off unconsciousness a little longer, until the Nightmare's teeth close around soft necks and the gaping nostrils of a tossing head, rippling ink mane catch up to them with the inevitability of torture.

They are the newest children of the darkness, these things, not ancient and weary like the Fearlings, or shades of former people who had the blood of galaxies throbbing through their veins like the Nightmare Men, or hissing little Dream Pirates, once giggling and bright-eyed as those they so adore to torment. The Nightmares are not shadowy phantasms, they are solid, shifting sand, sleek and streamlined and modern. Their eyes are not the flinty, blind white of the others, but bright and hot as the tears of a fallen star. And what is more, they can stand in the light of the scorching, peeling sun, new, unbroken recruits in a tarnished general's army.

Wild and cruel, they drive sharp hooves and buck off any creature that would dare approach them in all their dangerous, indigo-black beauty. There is no doubt that the Nightmares are the most _beautiful_ of the shadow-creatures, tempestuous and unridden as a thunderstorm.

Save, that is, by one _creature._ They do not call him a _man_ anymore, this puppet king who manipulates his strings as if he were the orchestrator all along. The puppet king is _old,_ but the Fearlings are older. The puppet king belongs to them, carries them and preserves them, and with their seeping poison he reaches out and claims others to the darkness, others to be lonely and lost and broken like himself. But a hollow Nightmare Man or a milky-eyed Dream Pirate is not what Pitch Black craves.

He thinks he has found it, in his Nightmares. They are strong, like he is, they are independent and flighty and razor-beautiful, like he is. They are not lazy masters, like the old and recumbent Fearlings, and they are not mindless, shifting servants like the Nightmare Men and the Dream Pirates. They are what he dares to call – _companions._

He succours them, teaching them how to grow, how to walk and feed and move around in this strange world of light and lines and hidden darkness, every part of him somehow parent to these weak-kneed wobbling foals. They adore him, how could they not? He is the protector and leader of the herd, faultless in his strength and knowledge, and they, like all young things, all children, think the puppet king who watches is a god beyond reproach.

The defeat, when it comes, is both a horrible shock and an insulting betrayal. The Nightmares are creatures born of theft and maliciousness, and so they return to their roots, sweeping aside their maker and king with rebellious, shrieking hatred, perhaps too deeply ingrained in sand that had once been golden for them to ever truly dismiss. It is not in the nature of shadow creatures to be loyal, or affectionate, or anything other than predatory, constantly prowling for weakness. And yet, the Nightmares of corrupted dreamsand are all three.

Like a pack of wronged children, they drag him, kicking and screaming, to be punished. But the Nightmares are only beginners at what the Fearlings have long since mastered, the art of breaking a man and remaking him into a _creature_ , and to Pitch Black the old memory of a screaming daughter is as pleasing as it would have once been horrifying. They try failure, crushing and devastating, but Pitch brushes it aside with the careless slipperiness of a shadow too used to ashes. They attempt loneliness, but are held back by the realisation that Pitch Black has never known a friendship in order to miss it. Desperately, they scream the awful, generic fears of the human world, he is ugly, he is a monster, disgusting and vile and deserving of death. Pitch accepts these titles happily, even flattered, he is a _King of Nightmares,_ and he is no sweet dream.

In frustration, the stamping Nightmares circle their prey. The huff of their breathing is loud, their indignity present in every arrow-line of their thin bodies. He lies there, wheezing and yet unbroken, a challenging smirk on his lips. The puppet king has watched for many, many years, learning the gentle tug and pull of his own strings, and now he moves them like a dancer, twirling between black lines of ownership and control. The Fearlings press affectionately against his skin, bumping aside bone and organ; he is a useful, entertaining servant, a clever host.

The shadows push deep, and the Nightmares toss their beautiful, cruel heads, and scream harshly to the rocky cavern. They cannot break him, so they take him instead, drain him dry of the only things he has left. The strong, steady, _believing_ heart and the cold logic of a rational and strategic mind the Fearlings had so fallen in love with even as the cloth of what would become their puppet watched for their defeat. They swallow him whole, breaking apart memory of light and kindness and dark alike, and when they have finished, he is still not broken, but he is defeated. The huffing Nightmares withdraw, leaving a small, curious bundle of bone and grey skin on the rock floor. It's not _quite_ what they wanted-

-but

It's close enough.

* * *

The creature that crawls out of the dark is not quite Pitch Black

-but

It's close enough.

The moon hangs high, bearded forests, skeletal with wintersbreath. The creature scrapes his nails on trees and _laughs_ when they come away aching – filed down, scrabbling-on-stone-like -

he stops. He has become so good at forgetting. When the shadows have picked his mind clean there is nothing he can remember to fear.

He is a blank slate. He is unafraid. He is

_. . . f r e e ._

-he knows enough that he wants to stay that way. _(he cant remember why)_

Mist and snow kisses his cheeks, he shivers at the cold, skinny limbed weak fawn staggering first tentative steps from his doe. He is young. He plays in the snow. When he tries to touch it, it _bites_ his fingers with sharp cold teeth and he holds slender hands to his chest and cries. Tears are new. They are _h o t_. Heat is new, the cold sinks deep inside him until it's as if it is all he will ever feel.

                 -he does not know why he does that. No one comes. No one ever does. When they do, they bring _p a i n._

He knows pain. Slow dull pain like the bruises in his bones. Bright hurting pain that makes red spill from his skin like splitting hooves. He knows pain. He knows enough to not want it anymore.

He plays for a while. It starts to get light, the moon closes his eye. He tries to tell him to come back, he doesn't want to be alone, but the moon doesn't hear him.

He talks to the trees instead. It's not quite what he wants

-but

it's close enough.

There is a nightmare, the townsfolk say. He wanders, a ragged slip of black and grey. There is a nightmare, and if you meet him, he will dance for you, and beg for you not to go. If you stay, he'll devour you whole. If you go, he'll chase you.

There is a nightmare, the townsfolk say. He is lonely, this nightmare, he never rests. There is a nightmare, the townsfolk say, and he is looking for you.

The creature cannot be seen. He does not know this, at first. They walk through him like he's a ghost. He listens to the townsfolk whispering about the nightmare. He listens to the priest whispering about demons, hellspawn, creatures with souls so ugly they were brought back to be punished again by a life of endless torment.

He asks the moon if he is here to be punished. The moon does not answer. He never does.

The creature looks down at his shattered nails. There is _blood_ on his hands. For the first time since he pulled himself out of the dark, the creature _hides_ from the light of the moon. He is ashamed. He does not want to be h i m s e l f. The light seems to _d r a i n_ from his eyes.

Things.... _change_ after that.


	3. Chapter Two

Tooth looks for him. She swears she does. She flies until her wings ache, and sends her complaining fairies to comb every part of the globe. But how can you find a shadow that only watches? The answer is keep looking, and hope he decides to let you.

It's not a difficult decision, once she knows, once she remembers the past, using Pitch's tooth. Guilt weighs her down like lead, spurs on her wings like angry hornets. She cannot rest until she finds him. She cannot rest until she has saved Pitch Black, fixed what is broken.

Her presence is a hummingbird's thrumming in the silence of a dead, winter-locked forest. It's a dark place, haunted looking humans wandering lost through the woods, black, bare trunks, branches like clawing hands. Her fairies have heard mysterious, melancholy murmurs in the night, mothers clutching children and fathers cradling wives close as they speak of a _nightmare._ Terror runs deep through the icelocked heart of the wild, cruel country, ice raking the air like daggers and snow laden branches like pale white grins. She thinks he would like this sort of place.

The moon does not watch her tonight, his eye stares away, blank and unblinking. Soon the silent, watchful presence will be back, an omnipresent observer that had always made Tooth smile to see. Now, she is glad, illicitly glad. She does not want the moon to bear witness to this. She thinks, she _fears,_ that she will be lucky this time.

Tonight is the night.

The moon's milky eye does not deserve to see the watcher; old scores, resentments run too deep for any forgiveness to well between them. Too long the Moon has stared down, silent and deaf to a watcher's misery. Not that Tooth has been any better but...she hopes maybe that the pieces of him still remember the _could-have-beens_ and _wish-we-weres_.

She is not sure she could bear the hatred she deserves. She wonders what it is about him that makes her feel so fragile. Surely, she remembers everything he has done, every hurt he has caused? But memories blur with time and emotion. Tooth knows that all too well. For a Guardian of Memories, she spends too long forgetting when it is convenient.

“ _Pitch!”_ his name splits the fraught silence like a scream and she winces. _“Pitch!_ Please, I know you're there.”

She sinks to her feet, the brush of frost kissed leaves crunching under her weight. Her feathers prickle with anticipation. The forest groans, low and shrieking, wood lamenting. Her heart begins to race, her feathers prickle, and heat flushes her skin. She knows this. She can always feel when he is watching her, that itch between her shoulderblades.

Shadows flicker. Fools gold, rusty pennies, harvest moons. Hotter than dragonfire, sly and glittering like stolen dreams. She only catches sight of them for an instant.

“Pitch!” Tooth cries, shoots after the shifting shadow. He reappears, slinking, sliding over pristine snow, somehow insubstantial. A glitter of watching eyes. Always watching. Then he disappears again, always a step, a stretch too long away. His form is too amorphous for her to identify any features but for this brilliant gold eyes, sleek with deceptive silver. For all she knows, he could be staring right through the back of his head.

She ducks and weaves through the dark trunks, relying on every ounce of skill and manoeuvrability to keep up. But how can a simple bird outrun darkness itself?

Tooth supposes it's lucky she's never been a simple bird.

She pins him to a fallen tree, kicking him to the ground, swords at his throat and long grey hands raised in desperate surrender. His head cants to the side, his arched neck exposed, his bright bright eyes clouded with fear.

“ _Please don't hurt me!”_ Pitch cries, “Please don't hurt me!”

“I'm not going to hurt you,” she says, but she can't deny the thrill that runs through her at the sight of the powerful Nightmare King cowering at her feet. Tooth has ever been a hunter, and the Watcher the unmatchable prey. Finally having caught him is a victory like no other.

_Not yet, I haven't._ He doesn't seem quite...well, there are no insults, no biting sarcastic remarks, and Tooth heart sinks, leaden, at the look in his eyes.

Toothiana is a Guardian of Memories, but there is no memory in Pitch Black's eyes.

Pitch presses himself back against the fallen tree, clawed fingertips scoring harsh scars in the damp bark. A bead of blood wells up at the point where Tooth's sword digs in, and she watches it dip between his protruding collarbones. He is wearing the tattered remnants of his robes, large patches of grey skin on show, long, slim legs almost entirely bare, feet digging into the snow. His thin chest rises and falls sharply, his eyes dart to her sword and then up at her face, nervously.

“I'm not going to hurt you,” she repeats, and sheaths her sword, but stays close enough that he can't immediately jump to his feet and run.

He looks like a frightened deer. His tongue flicks out to wet his lips. He stares up at her, wide-eyed and making no attempt to correct the messy sprawl of his limbs on the floor. His fists clench slightly on the bark. She savours the details of him like he is a banquet and she a starving woman; too long has he hid in his shadows, blurring shapelessly away, so much that seeing him unveiled, stark lines against the whiteness of the snow, makes her breath catch. She's never quite been able to forget that he's _beautiful._

“Who are you?” he asks.

There is no recognition in his eyes. She can almost see the pending decision, _fight or flight?_ He chose flight before, but she doesn't doubt if she isn't careful he will snap into fury like a wildcat. Tooth has had enough of fighting him.

“Oh Pitch,” says Tooth softly, because she can see the empty space in his gums where his tooth should be. “What did they do to you?” To a Guardian of Memories, the truth of what has been done to him is both ironic and horrific. He bears no wounds, if he did, they already have closed. The nightmares had gone after his mind, instead. She wonders if it can be fixed. She has to try.

The thought of her watcher not remembering her when she has only just understood their complicated past is beyond bearing.

He blinks at her. “I got out,” he points out, with a touch of insult, like a rebellious child.

“Yes,” she agrees, infusing a hint of forced pride into her voice. “I can see that. You did so well. And I'm so, so sorry.”

He looks wary, shrinking back against the log. “Why? Are you going to hurt me?”

_Stop asking me that._ He looks almost pathetic, suddenly tense and alert but so very powerless. He is paler than she has ever seen him, too, skin white as the snow around him instead of ashen grey. Perhaps his shadows are dormant.

“I promise I won't hurt you,” she says firmly. “I'm here to help you. We're going to make you better.” She smiles at him and inwardly winces, thinking that perhaps chasing him with swords out isn't the most tactful or friendly first impression. _I have to fix him. I can't leave him like this._

Could he even be fixed? She would have to try.

“Better?” There's an odd expression on his face, one she can't quite place. Somewhere between hope and fear, as if she is offering his dreams to him on a plate, if only he would lean over a dizzying abyss to reach them.

“Did you ever wonder how you got here?” she coaxes softly, has a wry flashback to Jack Frost. _We were all someone, before._

“I thought I was cursed...” His voice is very quiet, and Tooth reaches for him before she can quite stop herself, her hands extended to help him up. He stares at her like she is an alien.

“No. You have a purpose, a job, just like me. I help people remember their memories when they need it most, like you do right now. ...You can trust me.”

He looks confused, but she thinks she can see a hint of softening in his watchful eyes, wariness sliding into curiosity. He doesn't trust her, it's obvious. She doesn't really expect him to, but it doesn't stop her from hoping. She can work with curiosity.

_He despises you. He will hate you for what you did when he remembers._ Or rather, what she didn't do, when she stood by and watched his Nightmares drag him into the abyss.

“Put your hand in mine,” she tells him, softly, kindly.

Tentatively, he reaches forward with a shaking fingertip, pausing before he makes contact with her skin. She nods, with her best soothing smile, and it seems to work because he musters his courage, turning a steely look onto her outstretched hand.

Tooth resists the urge to snatch it back as Pitch furrows his brow into a glare, daring himself to make the final step. They've fought each other for too long to have complacency now, but as she looks down at him and takes in the concentration on his face as his cool palm slides against hers she remembers the heat of ancient jungles and burning, silent eyes, always watching, she wonders if this is what he looked like all those years. Did he watch her with the same intensity he does now, like Tooth is the sun lighting up his darkness?

_I have burnt him just as cruelly as any sun._

The pads of his fingertips explore, lightly, sliding over her wrist, mapping the tendons. She lets him, holding back a pang of pity at the curiosity, the almost childish wonder as he inspects her flesh like he has never had the chance before – _he hasn't,_ she reminds herself, and if he ever did, he doesn't remember it. He marvels at the texture of her feathers, tracing the deep sapphire green like the finest of jewels.

He forgets his wariness, setting it aside like a curious raven, quick, sharp movements as his fingers rake through the feathers covering her forearm, jumping a bit when Tooth shivers at the almost ticklish sensation, biting her lip to stop herself from giggling. He seems to be oblivious to the strangeness of his actions.

He glances at her, checking she is fine with it, then slowly leans forward and pushes his head into her hand, rubbing the sharp angles of his cheekbones against her palm. His skin feels warm, his breathing skates across her wrist. His eyes flutter closed in the most blissful expression she has ever seen him wear, abruptly too private for her eyes.

Tooth sucks in a shocked breath, her wings shifting awkwardly. This...is new. She wants to pull away, because it feels strange and rather bizarre to sit there, with Pitch leaning his temple against her hand with half closed eyes, looking all too at peace like he has discovered heaven.

It is rather familiar, and she tenses when she recognises it – Jack does this, too, savours touch slowly, discreetly pressing closer as if to maximise the rare opportunity, making time around him just _still_ in order to concentrate his entire being on analysing touch. He is never so obvious about is as Pitch is being, but then again, he never was so alone as Pitch is.

His hand curls around her elbow, and his head nuzzles into her palm, the hot puffs of his breath sending goosebumps over her flesh and making her feathers prickle. His nose bumps under her thumb, and instinctively she cups his cheek, her other, free hand sliding into his hair. It is coarse, stiff with grease and matted with mud, but she tells herself she doesn't mind, rubbing her fingertips against his scalp. Tooth does her best not to think about the _things_ that could be living in the disgusting, caked mass, instead focusing on Pitch's unlikely and unexpected trust.

_I don't suppose he remembers he has to be wary,_ she thinks a little sadly.

He shudders as her nails accidentally scratch his scalp. “Who are you?” Blindly, he pushes forward, rising with signature grace onto his knees. “Why are you doing this?” His eyes open, and all at once he looks startled, remembering himself. She traces the shell of his ear, marvelling at the pointed shape, and he grows quiescent.

The questions make her pause. _I shouldn't be doing this._ He would regret it when he regained his memories, and he'd probably make her regret it, too. _But right now he needs it,_ she reassures herself, has a silent, conflicted war, watching Pitch's cheeks flush as he bites his lip, embarrassed by his neediness even though he knows no reason to be. He leans back slightly, as if to pull his head away, but at the last moment quivers and presses back again, as if he cannot bear to tear himself away from something he has longed for.

She wonders how long it has been since anyone recognised him as more than a shadow.

It is that reaction that decides her, even though she knows that she would have helped him anyway. She is a Guardian, and this is partly her fault, the least she can do is help fix it. If she could get him back to the Tooth Palace, she could call the other Guardians and try and find a way to jog his memories. She was sure she could do something.

“My name is Toothiana,” she says finally, gently sliding the hand out of his hair and stepping back to a polite distance.

He looks a little lost, kneeling there on the floor with his mussed hair and wide bright eyes, and Tooth bites her lip because _stars and suns the King of Fear should not look_ adorable. But he undoubtedly is, fidgeting with his hands in his lap, glancing up at her shyly as if to check she is still there.

_'“I thought I was cursed...”'_

“You are Pitch Black,” she adds.

“I have a name?”

“Of course you have a name,” she says, puzzled, and he stares at the soil and flushes, pallid cheeks blotching an ugly red. Humiliation is not a good look on him, and Tooth winces at her own tactlessness. She hurries to change the subject. “I want you to come with me.”

“Where?” It's not an immediate refusal, and somehow it confuses her. This open and trusting Pitch Black is so bizarrely opposite to the spitting, snarling and defensive creature she knows, like someone has casually flipped the world over on its head and not told her. It makes her job easier...but she winces at the change.

“My home,” she tells him. “The Tooth Palace. I'll call my friends, and we'll see if we can get you your memories back.”

Pitch still looks a little hesitant, but slowly he rises to his feet, and Tooth is suddenly reminded how _tall_ he is. He towers over her, seems aware of it by the way he awkwardly shifts towards the bare trunk like he wants to disappear into shadow.

She rises into a hover to be at eye-height, and Pitch turns panicked, startling forward like a frightened horse ready to bolt.

“Don't-!” His hands make an aborted motion towards her, as if he intends to grab hold of her and clutch her to him. Tooth zips back a little, and he yanks his hands to his chest like he has been burned. His face burns and his hands link behind his back. He appears to find his feet very interesting.

“I'm not...” she trails off. The awkwardness deepens. He coughs and shuffles his feet. Tooth doesn't know what to do. Her job as a Guardian and Tooth Fairy doesn't teach her how to deal with tragically beautiful and touch-starved shadow men with abandonment issues. Especially – and now he's standing up, it's more obvious than before – shadow men with torn clothing that reveals more than it really covers.

“Clothes,” she says under her breath, “are... a priority.”

He blinks. “Are they?” He looks down at himself, at his ragged robe, and then back at her, wearing no discernible clothing aside from her sword belt, and frowns in evident confusion.

_Well I've got no objection- No, no, bad thoughts. I'm a terrible Guardian and a terrible person._

“Shh,” she says, instead, and then casts around helplessly for some way to transport him. She has to get him back to the Tooth Palace, perhaps she can jog his memories with his missing tooth, either way, she doesn't think her resolve can stand Pitch slinking around half-dressed for much longer.

He tilts his head, like a curious raven, those flaming citron eyes burning right into her soul and making heat race through her pounding heart, but remains obediently silent. His ragged cloak shifts in a sudden chilly breeze.

He is thin, thin enough that she could probably carry him without too much trouble, that is, if she could master herself to resist holding the distracting, damnable creature close to her body for the entirety of the flight. She swallows, looks him over speculatively, keeps looking a little longer than necessary. She can see his ribs through a rent in his robe.

_I'll have to feed him up._ Tooth wishes she had one of North's snowglobes, but she's strong, and she's not a young fledgling anymore, surely she can deal with not touching an attractive man for a little while – _but he's not just a man, he's your watcher –_ it couldn't be _that_ difficult. Could it?

“Come here,” she orders, and he really is delightfully, and _worryingly,_ obedient, padding closer soundlessly until he's directly in front of her, eyes never wavering from her. She can smell the pine-forest and brimstone musk of him, see the gleam of sweat shining on his chest – he exerted himself, running from her.

“Why are you trusting me so much?” she murmurs, crouches, sliding one arm around the backs of his knees. “I'm going to carry you now,” she informs him. He has enough time to blink before she knocks his spindly legs out from underneath him and catches him in a perfect bridal carry.

As she thought, he is very light, like a fallen leaf in her arms. He blinks up at her, face set in that adorable frightened deer expression. There's not a single hint of malice, of _Nightmare King,_ anywhere.

The nightmares really have broken him, made him docile. Not that Tooth's particularly complaining. She thinks she'll start missing her Watcher's fire later, but now with the chance to hold him and really _look_ at him, skinny elbows and jutting bones and all, she'll take what she can get.

Dawn begins to blush along the horizon, and Tooth mutters curses to Mother Nature's appalling sense of humour as she takes off, muscles bunching and straining.

“It's supposed to be flying off into the sunset, you ignorant-”

The breeze picks up warningly, and Tooth, grumbling, shuts her mouth before she gets herself into trouble.

She staggers a little under the added weight, but quickly regains herself, wings buzzing strongly, and sets a course for the Tooth Palace.

Pitch peers over her arms, wide-eyed but grinning, a bright wonderful smile that shows off each of his rotten yellow teeth. She winces a little. She'll make him scrub them later, before she returns his memories, she thinks, with a little amusement. Some dental treatment would do him the world of good.

Tooth tries very hard not to think of Pitch strapped down to a chair and all the connotations thereof. Of course her dentist chair has straps – Tooth's “patients” are rarely willing to take as good care of their teeth as she thinks they should.

_Perhaps I should I get out more._

His hands dig into her shoulders, but Pitch is smart enough not to jostle her and detract from her concentration while she's flying. He watches the landscape pass underneath them, eyes lidding as they enter a warmer climate and the lazy heat seeps through into his muscles. Pitch lays his head against her chest, rubbing his cheek against her soft feathers. Tooth's wings stutter for the briefest moment before she forces herself to forge on.

The closer she gets to the Palace, the more mini fairies accompany her, some settling curiously on the now sleeping Pitch's body and poking him with their sharp beaks. Tooth scolds them, and they dart away, tittering. They are more or less extensions of herself, and Tooth's feelings filter down to them. They bear him no particular ill will, though a wary distrust.

The gleaming walls of the Palace shine, radiant, like a rose jewel in the sunlight. Tooth descends with relief, heading straight for her patient room. The bindings on that chair have been enspelled to the degree where not even North can break them, and Tooth knows a few excellent knots to render someone largely immobile, courtesy of Sandy.

She rests the sleeping Pitch in the chair, manoeuvring his lax limbs into position. She ropes him firmly at the ankles and wrists, before carefully tying the strap around his forehead that will keep his head still. There is no point in trying to recover his memories while he sleeps, so instead Tooth fetches her cleaning kit, and cracks open the case.

Time to see if she can save some of those awful fangs.


	4. Chapter Three

There are eyes that glare when he wakes. Not like the giant yellow eye, fierce and hated in the sky, but close. There's as much venom, at least.

He tugs at straps that bind him rigid to a chair and makes a low sound of distress.

He does not like this. Being trapped is too familiar _(stomping hooves snorting horses shadows thick slow regretful 'careful now young ones don't break it too badly')._ He struggles wildly, but it is hopeless and there are no shadows to protect him here.

_-no_

He was free, he was free and then he met her and she-

- _she lied to me._

Panic rises, and he begins to snap and snarl, hissing at the bindings like he could frighten them into disappearing. The glaring eyes watch him scornfully, so he hisses at them too.

“Pitch.”

In an instant, green hazes into his vision. Feathers, buzzing wings that blur iridescent colours. Soft hands, soft smile, soft eyes like pink Arabian silk. He stares at her with wide eyes,

- _betrayed,_

and shies away when she reaches out.

“Let me _go.”_

Her mouth twists downward. “They are there for your own protection, until we ascertain if we need to help you or not.” Softer now. How does she do it? Leech sternness, leech _power,_ until she is gentle and soothing and _trustable_ when she is _lying, lying,_ all shadows twisted over her core of cold iron?

Scowling, he settles back and tries to make his feelings known by baring his teeth. He runs his tongue over them, working his mouth. It feels...

_. . . o d d ._

Like breathing in pine needles and frost. He puffs experimentally, but no chilly whiteness emerges.

“I cleaned your teeth.” _Sheepish._ He thinks. Emotions are difficult.

He shifts a little. There is something uncomfortably heavy and scratchy on him. He is used to shadows, softer and cooler than silk, like a silky marble embrace.

He is not wearing shadows. Some baggy leg garment and torso garment in shades of red and gold like fire and hatred.

_Gold?_

_-hatred._

“I also dressed you.”

He shakes his head and huffs a lock of oddly soft hair out of his eyes.

… _soft...?_

“...and maybe washed your hair.”

He blows away the lock of hair again, shaking his head in frustration when it refuses to stay out of his eyes. He hears one of the glaring eyes chuckle _winterbright._

Tooth reaches over and lightly tucks the recalcitrant hair behind his ear, and he turns his face blindly into her touch, his entire body straining towards it as best as he can in the bindings. The surroundings

_\- f a d e._

He is nothing more than the warmth of her palm cupping the curve of his skull, the brush of her feathers against his cheek, the spicy scent of her skin, as if the parts where they connect as the only ones that _matter._

The buzz of speech is background noise, the glide of approaching faces blurring together into one great scowling one, mean eyes that glitter _gold_ and green and blue, breath that curls frost in his veins and a meaty hand that hesitates towards him as if going to shake his shoulder.

“ _Is he okay?” Winterbright- cracking ice d r o w n i n g a l o n e._

“ _Is that you doing that?” Gruff springfresh- broken kits and d e a d f a m i l y._

“He's been alone a while.” Her.

The touch withdraws, claiming all heat from his body as it does so, like his soul is being pulled out through a hook. He tries to follow, but the restraints hold him back. He lies there limply instead, staring at her, gilded in the rose-tinted light streaming through the window. She smiles at him.

A face eclipses his vision, curious, wary. _Fallen-stars-screaming-Fearlings-white-eyes-fear-hunger-falling-falling-falling-_ a r r o w-

_Gold._

_The heartbeat of an elder star._

He lurches back. The soft, warm face tilts, as if _confused,_ but those deep cold eyes harbour the glacial chill of space, of broken galaxies and toppled civilisations and ten thousand burning bodies of old stars in the sky, every night, millions and millions of extinguished stars, their black ghosts staining his skin

– _for what were Fearlings but the darkest shadows cast by the b r i g h t e s t of all?_

The star _g r i n s._ Maybe it hears its kin shaking in their puppet.

These shadows are _old,_ and they support him now, cloaking their creature and protecting their puppet king from the pain of the star's proximity. Fear wells like a pinprick, but it is manageable, and all he does is yank the restraints, trying to shrink away.

He does not remember much _(and knows he does not want to)_

-but

_it is enough to know he never wants this star near him._

It is so very _old,_ and he can feel the immensity of it pressing down on him like it wants to swallow him whole.

He isn't sure he hears it correctly, a slow, shivering whisper jagged through his body, uncoiling like a victorious dark serpent. The whisper repeats, and repeats, like it is being echoed through the empty caverns and hollows of his flesh. It slides, slickly amused, against twanging nerves and with delicate puppeteer claws _twists_ his muscles taut. _'hello...hello...hello...'_

His body goes rigid without his command, heart giving an almighty thump as his diaphragm tenses and he is not allowed to breathe.

' _what a pretty...star...' 'dream-bringer...' 'let usss tassste'_

His mouth works. His ears are filled with the macabre giggling of rushing voices, blocking out the shouting of the _winterbrightspringfreshwildchild_ her. There is only the Fearlings, whispering a long-forgotten song into their puppet's bones, and the amused star, thirsty eyes glittering deep indrawn golden brown.

It rummages through his mind, throwing aside fragile wish after broken dream with the petty amusement of a victorious enemy who has been wounded too many times for mercy.

_-a r r o w_

“Are you-” His voice breaks. Is he being punished? _Why?_

-scalding light throbbing from its superheated skin, clawing at his eyes and all over his body scars explode in agony like the _lick_ of a _whip._

He howls. Inside, the _Fearlings_ are screaming, the inferno of the star's presence crackles from its skin, visible even without shadows suffusing his sight as a _bright gold glow_ -

He lurches back and screams soundlessly. Things are _waking._ He cannot scream, there is

_-something_

swelling in his throat, blocking out any _air._

He chokes. Gasps. Struggles. His stomach begins to heave, and he turns his head to the side as a little hand curls around his lip, stretching his mouth wide. The Fearling _pulls,_ venomous oozing smoke with milky eyes fixed sightlessly, like a squirming maggot, out of his caging flesh.

The glaring eyes shout and cry out in horror and disgust, and he feels a broken moan caught in the base of his throat, cut off by aggravated shadows pushing close to the surface, outlining sluggish, bloated bodies beneath his pallid skin, black roses blooming on white. He feels their

_-f e a r._

The single Fearling oozes down over his neck, protectively it spills over the ash column of his throat, blind eyes blinking slowly. The ones that remain inside cling comfortingly to his bones like they are holding him together, and his eyes drift shut as for the first time in many years he hears the soft susurration of their _w h i s p e r s_ inside his head.

He remembers _this-_

_-he was born in it._

* * *

“...So then I brought him back here,” says Tooth, gesturing somewhat apologetically at the clean and dressed Pitch sleeping contentedly in her dentist chair, bruised purple eyes like hollows in his thin face. Without the covering of dirt and grime, removed by a careful and gentle sponge-bath by Tooth's fairies as Tooth rummaged about in her store room looking for clothes that would fit Pitch's long, lanky form, he looks somehow younger, almost innocent, skin the smooth pale grey of a new dawn, elegant body relaxed in sleep.

Once more, it is perversely like a violation, seeing Pitch so unguarded, and guiltily, Tooth hoards it.

Bunny stares at her incredulously. “Are you _nuts?”_ the Pooka explodes. “He could'a been tricking you!”

“I'm fairly certain he wasn't,” argues Tooth, “You didn't see him, he acted nothing like- well, himself.”

She shivers slightly, thinking of Pitch's glazed eyes, the gentle, innocent curiosity, the way he had looked at her like she is an angel.

Bunny gives her a skeptical look. “It's _Pitch,_ Tooth.”

“I trust Tooth,” says Jack, meeting Bunny's look with his own determined blue stare, “Hey, maybe that defeat knocked some sense into him.”

“If anything, I think it knocked the sense _out_ of him,” Tooth mutters. “I think he's really...gone, this time.”

Sandy looks at her gravely, his golden eyes so very sad that Tooth understands that Sandy knows exactly what she means, and has probably seen it before. Not for the first time, she wonders at the things Sandy has seen. He is older than the rest of them, despite being the third of so Guardian to be chosen.

North opens his mouth to speak, but before he can, Pitch twitches and shudders into wakefulness, yellow eyes flickering open and face twisting into panic. Fevered hisses and snarls rip from his throat like animal growling, and he yanks and arches against his restraints, head snapping this way and that. It looks like Pitch is having a seizure, his eyes rolling back as he snaps his teeth at the empty air.

“Pitch,” says Tooth helplessly, moving forward cautiously.

He goes shock-still when he sees her, breathing quickly, his wide wide eyes looking so betrayed and hurt that Tooth's heart almost breaks in her chest. “Let me _go,”_ he pleads, all petulance and fear, and Tooth smiles sadly and says, “They are there for your own protection, until we ascertain if we need to help you or not.”

Pitch huffs at her, tipping his head back against the chair and continuing to strain against the restraints, back arcing like a taut bowstring, and Tooth can't help her eyes from following the knot and release of his muscles pulling underneath his skin. He is gorgeous, her mouth goes dry.

His tongue is working distractingly, poking and prodding at his teeth. He rolls his shoulders back, wincing slightly as if in honest confusion. A lock of dark hair falls into his eyes.

“I cleaned your teeth. I also dressed you, and maybe washed your hair,” she says quickly, reaching out before she can stop herself to tuck the hair behind his ear.

His eyes close and he gasps soundlessly in rapture, entire body lurching into her touch. He shudders in delight, a flush warming his skin.

Tooth clears her throat, glancing over at the Guardians with slight embarrassment. Pitch doesn't appear to care, but it is such a _strong_ reaction to a simple touch, and, well-

“Is he okay...?” Jack asks slowly, eyebrows rising into his hairline.

“Is that you doing that?” Bunny asks in a tone of horrified disgust, nose twitching as he glares at Pitch, who is breathing fast through his nose, pressing his skull into her palm.

Jack shifts uncomfortably, and Tooth quickly withdraws her hand.

“He's been alone a while,” she says, casting around for an excuse.

Pitch slumps against the dentist chair, giving her such an unintentionally seductive look that Tooth has to look away with a tight smile. _For the love of little molars keep it together,_ she scolds herself.

Sandy moves forward, looking curious. Tooth stands aside to allow him room, and the little star beams at her before turning his attention to Pitch, cocking his head with a soft, reassuring smile.

Pitch goes ramrod stiff as if electrocuted, shivering goosebumps prickling over his skin. His face pales to milk white, and suddenly he heaves, as if he is about to throw up. Understandably disgusted, Sandy leans back, but remains beside Pitch, the worry on his gentle face only deepening as Pitch begins to choke.

Tooth half-starts forward, but Sandy holds up one small golden hand, studying Pitch intently. Pitch's mouth gapes, something like oily smoke forming in the back of his throat.

She almost screams when a _hand_ sticks out of his mouth, grabbing onto the side of his mouth and stretching it impossibly wide. Pitch gags, and a _monster_ oozes out, fleshy white eyes blinking blindly at the Guardians as it squirms, leasurely, from his mouth like a fat, slick slug.

“ _What the hell!??”_ Jack shouts, holding his staff defensively in front of himself.

“Disgusting,” Bunny yells, and North grabs for his sabers, shouting, _“Kill it!”_ He does not specify the creature or Pitch.

Tooth is speechless, nausea churning in her gut. How could she have ever thought he is beautiful when he has those...those _things_ squirming underneath his skin? She can see them now, pushing against his papery grey skin like seeking heads, gaping mouths forming unnatural hollows and dips all over his body. Sandy has stumbled back, something like revolted wonder on his face, instinctively forming his sand-whips.

“Don't hurt it!” Pitch cries, snapping the restraints without even noticing he is doing so. He cradles the Fearling protectively, the shadowy mess crooning as it leans into Pitch's touches. Pitch smiles at it, like it is a young flower, or a pet dog, and not some eldritch horror that has poisoned his skin, warped his mind, and broken him completely. “You were just protecting me, weren't you?” he hums to it tenderly, running one elegant grey finger over what Tooth assumes is the Fearling's 'spine'. The shadow-slug slumps into a gloopy mess, hissing its delight.

“Pitch,” says Tooth slowly, her hand over her mouth, “That's a _Fearling._ They're monsters.”

Pitch blinks at her innocently, and then looks down at the Fearling in his arms as if he is trying to see as she does. “Well, yes,” he says, and then blows on the Fearling's head, which loops amorphous, shadowy arms around his neck and _giggles_ into his collarbone. “Ow, ow, don't bite,” Pitch remonstrates, “You _know_ my nerves are more sensitive on the outside.”

 _Oh god oh god oh god he had that INSIDE HIM_.

“But it's a _Fearling,_ how can you treat it- like, like it's a _friend_ or, or-”

Pitch gives her an old, tired stare. “They were there when nothing else was,” he says softly, and turns his head to smile at the Fearling, the weight of centuries in the lines on his face. “ _They_ never left me alone.”

 


	5. Chapter Four

Pitch seems content to stay in the chair after his macabre display, playing with the Fearling and quite obviously watching Tooth, although his eyes slide away whenever one of the Guardians look at him. He sits cross-legged, the Fearling a puddle of black goo in his lap, silent and watchful, eyes glittering in that familiar, staring way that makes Tooth remember eyes the colour of rusty pennies gleaming coppery gold between the leaves of a rainforest, the split-grin of the feeding Watcher.

North and Bunny argue passionately with Tooth in low tones, glancing worriedly back at Pitch, who if anything is probably heightening their anxiety by the way his eyes seem to glitter silver-gold and the Fearling in his lap stretches sensuously. Jack just looks nervous and jittery, glancing longingly at the clear blue sky and frosting parts of the window in his unease. Sandy, perched on the windowsill, is locked in a penetrating stare-down with the Fearling, which seems equal parts curious and fearful of the old star.

At some point, Pitch starts to hum in low, discordant tones, like the old, warped shriek of broken piano ivories tumbling to a marble floor in a long deserted mausoleum. It is not immediately noticeable, but rather something that buzzes, rises and falls somewhere out of hearing, slowly aggravating until it rises to a crescendo, and Bunny whirls on him, roaring, _“SHUDDUP!”_

“Bunny!” shouts Tooth, darting in front of Pitch protectively and spreading her arms. She does not know why she does it, but Sandy sits bolt-upright and gives her such a terrified look of warning that all of a sudden all she can think of is what happened _last_ time a Guardian turned their back on Pitch Black.

_It's okay, it's okay,_ she meets Sandy's eyes, stares at him just as desperately, as if the force of this split-second belief is enough to forestall another nightmare sand arrow. Sandy clenches his fist and she can see he is still afraid for her, because a loop of sand that could easily become a whip snakes over his wrist.

“Please don't be scared,” she hears, unbelievably, and Tooth is so startled she glances over her shoulder to see Pitch watching her, eyes sad and quiet, “Fear only riles them up.”

“That's really not reassuring but thank you for trying,” Tooth hisses, and Pitch cocks his head in honest confusion.

Bunny is still tense with aggravation, but unbelievably, Sandy intervenes. A flashy banner of sand draws their attention, and simply, he tilts his head and presents six figures, a Pitch and a Tooth, standing together with a Palace floating in the background, and one by one each Guardian figure disappearing until they are alone. The Pitch figure stands up and looks imposing, but the Tooth figure only pulls out one sword. Then they relax.

There is a moment as everyone struggles to decipher the message. At last, North puts forward, “We should leave Toothy with Pitch...” Sandy nods and gestures for North to continue, “Because they will fight?”

Sandy shakes his head, looking exasperated, and in quick sucession shows various pictures of Pitch getting knocked off his feet by Tooth. Jack's face clears and he says, tentatively, “She can handle him?”

Grinning, Sandy smiles. He still looks a little worried as he catches Tooth's eye, but by the look on his face she knows that Sandy has made the decision to trust her judgement. Unexpectedly, Sandy's trust bolsters her confidence, and she straightens slightly, lowering her arms and stepping back until she is beside Pitch, who glances up at her hopefully.

After a moment of deliberation, he gently lays his head against her arm, and Tooth can't help but smile at him, although her smile is tempered by the memory of the shadows squirming beneath his skin. Goosebumps prickle over her arms, and she swallows and looks away.

With a simple twist of sand, Sandy smiles at Tooth, nods at the Guardians, and hops out of the window.

“I guess,” says Jack, glancing at North and Bunny, who look a little disbelieving, “I mean, Sandy knows what he's doing, right?”

“Come on Jack,” says Bunny, “Sandy...” He doesn't really seem to know what to say.

Eventually, North nods, his eyes considering. “Is fair plan,” he says slowly, “Pitch seems to like you Toothy, and you are knowing you can call on us if you need help, no?”

“Of course,” says Tooth, a little bewildered at their trust, and slightly vexed. Of course they would believe Sandy, but not her. She mentally rolls her eyes. _Boys._

“Too right about that,” Bunny mutters. “I don't like it. It's _freaky,_ you saw what he was like just now-!” His voice rises pointlessly, ears twitching. He looks uneasy with even the prospect of leaving Pitch alive, eyes narrowed in hate.

Pitch nuzzles his head into her arm like he can escape Bunny's condemnation, like a child. Tooth pats his shoulder and he quivers.

“Relax Bunny,” Now North has made up his mind, he is quick to support Tooth, “Toothy is fierce. She will pull out teeth if he causes trouble!”

Bunny shifts, evidently unhappy but unable to argue with North's point. “Fine,” he says, reluctantly, “but if he ever does anything-”

“I'll call,” Tooth hastens to say, feeling absurdly like a young girl hiding her boyfriend from an overprotective father. Her cheeks flame. Not that Pitch is any way- or that she would-

_Why must I always lie to myself so unconvincingly..._

She is rather brusque in showing the Guardians out, overriding Bunny's half-formed protests with impatient “yes” and “I'll be fine” and eventually, “Just _leave,_ Bunnymund!”. When they have finally left, Tooth leans against the wall with a sigh, watching Pitch, who has followed her down to the open area of the Palace but now hesitates in the shade of the doorway, glancing dubiously at the hot sun.

She smiles at him offhandedly. “We'll need to find you somewhere shady,” she sighs, “Come on.”

She walks towards him, instinctively he moves away, stumbling backwards and hitting the wall wide-eyed. His chest heaves and all of a sudden he looks frightened, the Fearling curling over his left wrist turgid, but his eyes quick and darting.

“Hey, calm down,” she murmurs, reaches out and, on tiptoe, rubs her thumb along his jaw. His spine dips and he pushes his head into her palm once more.

It is much more of a pleasant experience now his hair is washed and dry, and Tooth plays with the silky dark strands, purely for the pleasure of hearing the little noises Pitch chokes out when she tugs it, scratches her nails against his scalp, or the way his knees wobble and threaten to give in when she fists her hands in it tightly, forcing his body to bow forwards. He seems to enjoy being pulled around, and Tooth finds herself mildly curious as to why his head especially seems such a sensitive zone.

He gasps her name into her ear, slumping forward so her arms are encircling him, his head resting on her shoulder, and a prickle runs through her at the sound of her name from his throat.

“Pitch,” she teases by responding, and he makes a strained little noise. Tooth chuckles. “You're so sensitive,” she says, stepping away and waiting until he regains some semblance of composure. 

Pitch growls at her, still slightly flushed and looking rather embarrassed. Tooth hides another smile behind her hand and leads him towards her gardens.

They are the only place she thinks will be halfway suitable for his needs. The garden runs on natural time, which means it has a nighttime, and it is suitably wild for a creature like Pitch, who Tooth is not foolish enough to lock up in a room. In the centre of the garden is a gazebo, in which there are a deep pile of cushions and rich silk hangings to conceal a sleeper from the outside world. A brook gurgles softly, the noises of the fairies is blanketed beneath a well of hush, only the soft rustle of leaves which provide ample shade. Pitch doesn't seem to be bothered by the humidity, to Tooth's relief.

“Can I stay here?” he asks, curiously young, and Tooth nods. 

“Is it alright, here?” she responds, and Pitch nods swiftly, leaping into the pile of cushions in the gazebo and curling up like a cat, glittering golden eyes watching her from the darkness that immediately engulfs the space. She smiles tolerantly at him, fully expecting that reaction.

“I need to go now,” she says softly, and instantly Pitch is half out of the gazebo, staring at her with desperate betrayed eyes.

“ _Don't go!”_

“I have to, but I'll come back,” Tooth pleads to Pitch's unreasoning fear, “I'll come back, I promise. You have to trust me.”

He shakes. “You're going to leave me alone again,” he whispers, “You- you're-”

Curling up again inside the nest of pillows, he makes himself small in abject misery, and Tooth finds it even worse that he does not bother to try and fight her to stay, because he knows it is already hopeless.

Tooth frowns and concentrates. A few moments later, two fairies zip through the canopy and hover, cheeping with curiosity, beside Pitch. 

“I said I had to go,” she says softly, “Not that I'd leave you alone.” 

Pitch stares at the two fairies curiously, uncurling slightly in order to bring the full weight of his penetrating gaze to bear upon them. The fairies fidget, but remain unwavering.

“They'll watch you for me,” she adds, “I'll be back soon. Rest, I know you must be exhausted.”

With a pang of disappointment, she glances at the Fearling, watching her with milky eyes. With Pitch's Fearlings so defensive, there is no doubt that they will attack if she tries to interfere with his memories and return them to him. It is safer to wait until they and he have calmed, and calm is only bred with familiarity. She will keep him at the Palace until such a time as it is possible to trigger his memories...

...and try not to lose her head while she's at it. 

 


	6. Chapter Five

It has been a few days, lazy, summery days in which the sun stares down at Pitch like it wants to cut him in two, and a few blessed nights, deep cool darknesses in which the balmy temperatures plummet and the glitter of a star's tears thrown over black velvet is the only illumination. The pale heavy eye of the moon looks elsewhere, and it has only taken a few hours of Pitch hanging like a bat from the tallest spire of the palace to realise it will not be coming back.

The routine here is different to Pitch's experiences in the cold-dark-wood he knows. There are little birds here he is not allowed to catch and eat, and the one time he tries he is sent running back to his shadows and nursing his wounds while _she_ screams at him. After that, he is given rules – no eating or catching or touching or interfering or approaching or _in any way_ hurting the little green birds, no touching the little white bones they carry, no playing with the shiny gold boxes where the little white bones go, no jumping off the tall spires, no bothering her when she is working, and no intentionally injuring himself.

In his defence, he'd only been playing with the Fearlings, it isn't his fault that she had interrupted his game of “catch the Pitch before it breaks its bones on the floor” and misinterpreted it. She'd done the thing which involves her arms holding him still and her body against his, (Pitch likes those) and her eyes had started leaking alarmingly. (Pitch likes that a lot less.) She was very afraid, a nasty sharp thing that still pangs _broken-memories-hurt-pain-if-i-lost-you_ and feels uncomfortable in Pitch's stomach. Then she'd spoken a lot at him, begging him to find her if he ever feels like doing that again.

Pitch had patted her head and tried to explain the game, but when he offered to let her play (he is certain the Fearlings will like her too) she stopped crying and looked disgusted instead. Then she'd slapped him and shouted at him for making her worry.

Pitch does not understand her sometimes.

He has the sense that there are a lot of _other_ rules, rules that are unvoiced and unexplained, rules that Pitch is just supposed to _know._ It makes him anxious, and wary of speaking to her, because he is almost certain to get something wrong. Every time he thinks he has understood the rules, they seem to change. He is not allowed to touch her, other times he is, he is not allowed to say what he thinks (once he is punched in the face) other times she gets angry when he lies. It is a confusing world, but there is one thing he knows for certain; she _hates_ his shadows.

Pitch does not understand. His shadows _are_ him, but when he asks, shyly, his head in her lap and her fingers combing through his hair, why she hates him so much, she denies it. This is one unspoken rule Pitch knows he is not allowed to break – any shadow play at all earns him long times alone in the garden (his cage) and a tightness around her eyes, a refusal to touch him like Pitch is a disgusting monster.

She denies it when he asks her, but continues doing it. Pitch does not understand, and he hates not understanding. So he does his best to suppress everything, and walks everywhere on feet that quickly start hurting, and shoves his shadows deep underneath his skin in a way that makes his entire body ache and fierce headaches spring up in his temples when she is around. When she isn't, Pitch becomes himself.

It feels like lying, and lying is a Bad Thing, but so is telling the truth. There's no way out.

Suppressing the darkness hurts. His skin begins to show noticeable signs of stress, angry shadows pushing from inside, trying to stretch and snap him. Pitch is grateful for the clothes she has given him, the baggy garments conceal the occasional lumps and teeth marks that scrape against his insides and make him curl up around the fire inside. The Fearlings are masters at how to make him hurt.

Pitch is a master at not showing his hurt, and she is not as observant as she thinks she is.

He enjoys his time with her anyway. She visits him when the shade grows cool and the evenings long, and orange shifting shadows glinting with gold are spinning brilliantly over the pink jewel of the palace, catching the highlights and gilding them into a magnificent artwork. Sometimes they talk, her telling him about her life, about her friends (Pitch makes biting observations that make her laugh until she cries) sometimes they sit in silence and she will run her fingers through his hair until he is shuddering silently, blood racing with a need he cannot name, cheeks flushed. Sometimes she talks then, too, telling him about himself, quiet descriptions of his eyes, of his limbs, the way he moves. Once, stumbling, he attempts to do the same thing, but his words fall short of her ineffable beauty, and he ends up simply blurting, “You're pretty”, and hiding the rest of the day from her kind amusement.

Pitch loves to listen to her talk. She never pauses, never hesitates, and her words are smooth and lilting with confidence, unmarred by the hissing sibilance of shadows. She tells him about all the things she has seen, and he learns about her life silently, leaning subtly against her until she gets the hint and pulls him close, so close her warmth seems to sink into his bones. Occasionally he falls asleep in the midst of a story of flying elephants or winged women, but she never seems to mind.

It is getting harder to ignore the clawing in his belly when he is around her, the tiny niggles of doubt and worry and fear that sing in the air like sweet cherries he is forbidden to bite down on. He mentions his hunger to her and she brings him fruit, fruit that makes juice run down over his chin when he bites into it, that tastes cold and good and settles in his stomach oddly. It makes him energetic, and he knows Tooth enjoys watching him eat...although why escapes him. The fruit is nice and sometimes it quietens the ache enough for him to continue ignoring it, but it is no longer working.

Pitch is _hungry._

He lurks around the spires where the fairies come in, allowing his eyes to flash and teeth to show, grinning darkly in the shadows, and sometimes if the fairy is particularly engrossed, he can glean a hint of sharp fright that tastes like a bolt of electricity in his bones. The shadows roil inside him, their harsh whispers sharp and commanding. They instruct him to do things, terrible things, wrenching her wings and ripping her feathers, caging her, breaking her, drinking in her fear until there is nothing left.

Pitch refuses, and agony like white fire keeps him screaming at day, when he curls up to rest his weary body. His eyes are deeply bruised from sleeplessness, and his nightmares have the bitter pill of familiarity. They show him things from the dark past he does not remember, things that make little sense during the day, but with the advent of night Pitch sorts through his thoughts, pieces together the precious fragments they grant him like a puzzle missing the colourful pieces.

He knows he has killed before, he remembers young children looking at him with wide terrified eyes before their bodies stain black and collapse inwards, grinning Dream Pirates lurching from the ash they leave behind. He remembers vast Doors so tall they eclipse the sky. He remembers the feeling of something small and metallic being clenched so hard in his hand that blood wells. He remembers making Nightmare Men and setting them on their former families. He remembers the dying screams of stars. He remembers a great scythe slicing through the light of _planets._

He does not know how he remembers these things, because they are in places that are nothing like the ones she describes to him, and he knows without knowing that the formation of these inky shadows is a power lost to him.

He does not...care.

Their faces are meaningless. He spends these dreams largely bored, peering curiously at the details they reveal. In one dream, his blood is red, coppery, almost...human. In all the others, it is _black black black like shadows and hate._

He thinks the shadows expect him to care. But why should he? He does not know them. He will not ever know them. Why should it matter to him if a few children died, tens of thousands of years ago?

He does not tell her, anyway, and adds the dreams of death to the other secrets he keeps.

Pitch is hunching tightly around his snarling belly, trying to calm the thorny knot of protesting shadows inside. He is so hungry, so hungry that spots are bleeding across his vision, the milky eyes of the Fearlings trying to see through his own. Occasionally he loses control and wakes up a few steps somewhere else, crumpled on the ground in a lifeless heap and whimpering as even the starlight seems to burn his flesh. He shrinks from the sunlight, huddling under a cushion and sobbing, tearless. His bones creak when he walks.

Pitch is running out of time.

His body feels old, so old. The weight of centuries presses down upon him, and suddenly Pitch falls, and can't get up.

_He is trapped._

His head begins to pulse and ache. The shadows _s-t-r-e-t-c-h._

_Something is -_

_laughing-_

_he is -_

_falling-_

He stares mindlessly out of eyes that do not see and feels the intense urge to throw up. His cheek is resting against sunbaked ground. His flesh aches with long dragging lines like the kiss of whips, and there is an agony in his torso, a flat line below his heart.

There's a bird in his hand, all shades of brown, a little sparrow, dark eyed and bright.

It's screaming.

 _-Oh,_ and it's afraid.

“I'm going to rip your wings off,” the shadows gurgle pleasantly, and the bird stabs his hand with its beak.

Pitch watches it mangle his hand, the lines of blood and _flesh_ it pulls apart-

-and _breathes._

Fear is electric, tastes of _flightless agony help me help me i'll never fly,_ thrums and groans like the sighs of leafless branches through his ancient veins, lights his body on fire, and his eyes flutter closed as the rich oily feeling of the fear dripping, turgid, into every pulling muscle, every aching joint, every pleased shadow, overwhelms him. Lightning sparks up behind his eyelids, a seething pleasure like wildfire and embers searing through his body; he is nothing more than an instrument, chords richly singing in an orchestra of the damned playing a symphony of horror.

It's not _quite_ what he wanted-

_-but_

it's close enough.

Eagerly, he hunches over it, saliva pooling instinctively in his mouth, growling deep in his throat and tormenting his meal, gulping down each burst of fear with delight. Already his limbs feel loose, springy, his muscles pull and ripple smoothly under his skin, which flushes healthy grey once more.

_The bird is howling._

_The bird is screaming._

_The bird is fighting._

-The bird is being ripped away from him.

He snarls and lunges, teeth snapping, for the green blur that has smashed into him, but a fist crashes into his jaw with enough strength to make his head ring, and Pitch topples. Something is screaming above the angry screeching of the Fearlings in his ears, and Pitch blinks away stars, recognises the world.

He's on his back, sprawled over the dirt, Tooth has one foot planted on his chest, directing a glower of betrayed hatred down at his face. In her cupped hands, she holds the weakly cheeping sparrow, which shudders in a bundle of feather and bone.

“You _monster!”_ She is screaming, “what the _hell_ were you doing to it?”

Pitch's struggles stop, and he lies still. Shame creeps over him, thick and cloying, and he feels something sting his eyes – _tears,_ he notices, in horror. He is _ashamed of being hungry._

_He is ashamed of being himself._

“I was hungry,” he said, stubbornly, feels the ugly flush over his cheeks, hot and burning. _It can't be wrong, I can't just be..._ wrong. _My existence is not wrong._

“Why didn't you ask for food?!” Tooth shouts. “This is – this is _wrong,_ this is – _you're a monster,_ I didn't think-!” She pauses, takes in a deep breath, obviously struggles to master herself.

Pitch stares up at her and thinks, _maybe I am a monster._ Tooth has not lied to him before. His jaw hurts.

“I understand you might feel hungry, but you can't do that,” she tells him sternly.

“But if I don't, I'll die,” says Pitch softly, and Tooth looks uncomfortable.

“Well...It's not _nice!”_ she protests, and Pitch blinks at her.

It feels nice to him, he thinks. He likes drinking fear. It makes him happy. “Why?” he asks, simply.

Tooth struggles for words. “I cause memories, yes?” she tries, “I make people remember.”

Pitch nods. Yes, he knows this, she has told him before.

“Well, if I only ever reminded you constantly of the bad ones all the time, you'd feel terrible, wouldn't you?” Tooth explains, and Pitch thinks about it.

He thinks about how awful he feels during his nightmares, even if he no longer cares about them when he wakes up. It would be horrible to be stuck in that state all the time. He nods, slowly.

“But,” she adds, perhaps seeing how accusing she sounds, “If you didn't have bad ones, you wouldn't appreciate the good ones!” She smiles down at him, as if she has just validated his existence, offered him salvation.

Pitch doesn't want to make things hurt like he does in his nightmares. “How can I make them happy, then?” he asks. Maybe he really has been doing it wrong, but it's okay, Tooth can teach him how to sustain himself without hurting anyone. Pitch smiles, slightly, at the thought.

Tooth's smile falls, and her eyes widen with horrible realisation. She stares at him, and guilt creeps into her expression, wings droop and her feathers seem to suddenly lose their shine.

“I suppose...” she flounders for words in the face of the desperate hope in his bright, bright eyes.

“...You can't.”

 

 


	7. Chapter Six

The night is cool, it kisses her feathers with the brittle touch of frost, and her wings blurring in the frigid air feel stiff without the languid heat of her accustomed climate to soften them. Nonetheless, this is wild, dramatic land, a land of shadows and shifting where the first ice of winter is sinking its deep claws to the marrow, a land where the advent of night brings a hint of unease even in the most comfortably situated. It is perfect for Pitch Black, but hostile to Toothiana, and makes it known in the icy wind that whips her cheeks, nips them pale and makes her huddle against the warmth of the light bundle she carries.

Less of a bundle, and more of a man, head against her chest, breathing in the musk of her feathers, barely a weight in her arms. His arms loop securely around her neck, and if Tooth turns her head too quickly, she feels the prick of sharp claws against her nape. His breath curls like the smoke of a dragon in the chilly night air, it puffs against her neck, makes rhythmic shudders ripple through her frame. Shadows lie close to his skin, the single loose Fearling stains his chest deep mist grey, the mist that isolates, that traps a lost soul and tricks them into the depths of a foggy and desolate marshland of broken pasts. His lips, thin and lined like old parchment soaked in ink and left to dry, curling and cracking in the sun, are parted for easy breathing; he looks lulled almost to peaceful sleep by her proximity and constant touch.

The city is a large one, a sprawling concrete metropolis, the rippling golden pennons of dreamsand long since faded and allowed to ferment and roil in the turmoil of a powerful human mind. It's early, still early enough to be dark, but late enough that Sandy's dreams have lost their direct control. Dirty grey birds nestle amid the yawning cracks in smooth grey cement, their beady eyes glittering as they watch Tooth pass. A few jewelled fairies, brilliant specks of colour in the monochrome world of shifting dullness, the deadbeat grind of the slumbering city held captive by the claws of exhaustion and paranoia, wheel around their queen before darting off into the hush. A few glowing yellow lights spilling out over the gum-pasted pavement illuminate the sleepless, jerky movements of the restless humans within, drinking cheap coffee that scalds the throat and staring with mindless blank eyes that do not see.

His name shatters the monotonous silence, unheard, unrecognised by the shuffling steps of a night walker, headphones plugged into their ears, hoodie pulled over their head, hands jammed deep into their pockets. She alights, a feather touch, on the cold wet road, slick with dew that shines deceptively in the tired halos of the streetlamps like mass produced diamonds.

He shifts in her arms, lazy slitted eyes open, a delicate tongue traces the shape of carnivore teeth as he yawns, the whiteness catching and flashing off polished enamel, the slick sinuous slipperiness of that agile tongue, a huff of shadow running coal black serpent scales slowly, seductively in his mouth and out, a swaying cobra of shadow that extends for a moment, to caress her cheek, before he inhales and draws it inside him once more. His spine flexes and arches, and she moves with his flowing stretch until his feet place themselves, almost demurely, on the road tarmac, a swish of shadow cloak concealing the sight of slim, long legs almost jealously from view.

He _extends,_ impossibly far, slender limbs stretching above his head as muscles pull and elongate, stretching out every inch of that lanky frame. Once done, he rolls his shoulders, glances behind himself at her, eyes heavily lidded and glittering golden like harvest time.

“Here?” A sibilant hiss, taut and expectant with barely restrained hunger and lust. There is at once something primal in the air, something tense in the line of his shoulders and the flare of his nostrils, the way his eyes can't stop darting from house to house. He _vibrates_ with desire, quivering muscles held back only by the need for her approval.

The power he offers her is as terrifying as it is glorifying. She can't help but want to test that resolve, the same way a person has a mad desire to court death, the ragged embrace at the top of a tall building, the skeletal kiss of taking risks she knows will one day kill her.

“You can't hurt anyone,” she tells him, knows it is an obsolete warning – she has him on a leash of her dominance, but a simple shrug of those slender shoulders and he can slip her control, Tooth is no Sandy, skilled at breaking apart those who go to him and rebuilding them under the safety and suspension of his total control. She's nothing more than a little girl who forgot, a foolish woman who remembered.

And yet.

It is her word, not Sandy's, that Pitch waits for, the Nightmare King, even ragged and broken down as he is, this shattered raven resettling his glossy indigo wings, spreading the poison of his bite into the festering wound of unguarded minds. She watches the tension of his knotting jaw, his clenched teeth, the barely audible scrape of bone on bone. His fists are balled, juddering shivers keeping him pinned.

“As soon as you've had enough to sustain you,” she orders quietly, “You come right back here, to me. Do you understand?”

“ _Yes.”_ He breathes it like it is a prayer.

“You don't hurt anyone, you don't traumatise anyone unduly, you don't let yourself be seen, you _come right back.”_ She repeats it, sternly, reaching out as if to touch his shoulder and solidify the command with contact, but at the last moment trepidation forces her hand back, less than an inch from his skin. 

“Yes, yes, oh yes,” he repeats, breathlessly, agreements tumbling eagerly from his lips, attention wholly focused on the banquet of sordid anxiety spread out before him like an invitation.

“Go on,” she says, and for a moment, he's held still in an agony of indecision – where to go, how does he choose amid all the luxuriant fragrance, hanging sharp and heavy, low and unseen like poisonous gas, breathed in, savoured, itching underneath human skin and bubbling in frantic broken minds.

His shoulders roll back and a change works its way from deep underneath his skin, languid like a tarry cloak dripping over his frame. Shadows seep out from his skin, he bows forward slightly, and strides, great long, swinging steps, a cut glass smirk twisting his terribly beautiful face into something cruel, depraved, warped with animalistic hunger. His quick, light steps land perfectly on thirteen cracks in the pavement before the shadows, groaning, sway towards their king and enfold him in a smothering embrace, licking and blurring his savoured, precious body into a shred of poison.

Darkness billows, beats moth-wing frantic against windowpanes, eyelids. A sleeper mutters here, sighs there, a frown knots and a mouth downturns. It starts slow, like all things, a touch of worry in a dream, a faint murmur like the hiss of gas ovens left on, the scrape of a lost key, the blink of a phone out of battery on a dark night. It escalates; the rough pad of a finger trailing sensuously down a spine, the prickle of goosebumps, a dark mouth pressing close to the shell of a delicate ear _(don't turn your back don't open the door)._

Tooth, hovering above the city, watches the lights flicker and dim as if pressed down by a great hand, maliciously smothering, hears the rasp and rattle of screams wrung, hoarse, from soft throats, humans laying captive in their own sweat and sheets, eyes darting behind thin bruised lids. He haunts them all, each one precious, no succulent fear more decadent than the other. Sometimes she sees him, a stark shape hanging ragged against the sky, balancing perfectly on a telephone wire, long cloak dripping sulphur, graceful limbs caught up in a dance that makes her ache.

He is beautiful when he hunts, shockingly beautiful even as he is hideous, and Tooth begins to understand the strange dichotomy of Pitch Black, a creature neither kind nor cruel, captivating and repulsive, all things ugly and hated like a blessing in the dark. Here steps a shepherd of monsters, his crook a scythe and his pastures the terror of humans, every temptation ever feared.

The Fearling follows, a phantom echo like the dying scream of extinguished stars. It never feeds directly – perhaps it does not remember how, but Pitch takes it in his slender arms, breathes a coil of shadow into its mass, curiously tactile, curiously tender, a father with his dear child, though which is which, it is impossible to tell.

_They were there when nothing else was. They never left me alone._

Hated and cast out in the shadows, Pitch and his shadows have seduced one another, wound and bound themselves tightly, to the point where the ugly dripping Fearling accepts no kiss but the sustaining offer of sustenance from Pitch, and grey flesh slips into shadow swifter and smoother than water.

_To destroy one would destroy the other,_ Tooth thinks, and does not know how she feels, that the darkness that so vitally opposes the Guardians' existence is unbreakable, that no fragment of Pitch can be hers alone. 

It sounds so selfish, but Tooth watches him silhouetted against the moon, watches his shadows lap at his form jealously, possessively, the soft chuckles of rich and sardonic laughter, this powerful, confident predator who has lain his head in her lap and all but purred as she'd petted his hair, and she  _wants._ To know that Pitch Black will always belong first to his nature is an expected revelation and Tooth knows that she barely has a claim upon him – not with all those years pushing him away, aside, under the bed like ignorance could erase his existence, (and well it can). 

But just because she knows she deserves not a speck of this monster's darkness does not stop her from wanting.

She is a Guardian, he is a darkness, and Tooth is designed to kill creatures like him. She reminds herself of it, the Guardian of Memories who all too conveniently forgets – this weakness, this fostering, it is only for the duration of restoring him back to his kingliness, once he is the Nightmare King again, he will leave her in the dust.

Coalition between light and dark cannot work. Pitch is incapable of purifying himself.

Hearts obey no reason.

_I'm sick,_ she thinks wildly,  _I must be._

Guardians aren't supposed to be this way.  _She_ isn't supposed to be this way, hungering for a taste of darkness forever rightly denied. What sick creature chooses to be afraid, to venerate fear in all it's ugliness...? 

_I protect children, I'm a Guardian, I am Toothiana,_ she tells herself, and nowhere in there does it say that she is depraved. She must be ill – it is the only explanation for the impossibility of finding something so horrifically opposed to her enchanting. He is a  _nightmare,_ the King of Nightmares, and in all her fond recollections there is no space for that.

_If he can't be light, I can't know him,_ she thinks, in an agony.

Her thoughts are derailed when out of nowhere arms snake, pinning her wings and rendering her flightless for the briefest second it takes to pull her against a warm chest. She shrieks and flails, panic hitting hard and fast, and he, of course it's him, sighs into her shoulder, lips moving against her neck, arms like pincers around her waist.

“Can't you feel it?” he breathes, and she stills, panic still thrumming through her veins. She looks down at the pavement far below and grabs onto his forearms. Shadows lick her ankles, she kicks violently.

“The fear – _oh,_ if you could feel it-!”

Shadows churn underneath his feet, melding seamlessly with his flesh. Somehow, he is standing on nothing but an inksplotch of shadow against the night sky, pinning her like a jewelled butterfly in a masterful collection. He is unbothered by her struggling, continues to whisper in her ear, soft and seductively sinful, cheek nuzzling into her feathers, hot puffs of air ghosting against her skin like fingertips. Her feathers prickle. Her sensitive wings are carefully pressed against the warmth of him, she can feel the movement of his breathing, the choked vibration of his words.

“Let me go-!” Her voice is too high.

He chuckles. “Don't be frightened. Trust me.”

“I can't trust you-!” But she relaxes in his hold anyway, leans her head back against his shoulder and watches the swaying channels of darkness below them. He nuzzles into her neck, breathing in the scent of her feathers, and she muses idly that the fear has done him tremendous good – his eyes glitter wickedly bright, his cheeks are flushed and warm with good health, and his confidence, the aura of rich and lazy satisfaction, like a cat, seeps off from him like plumes of smoke.

Gone is the tremulous Pitch of before, and what stands in his place is powerful, confident... _dangerous._ Shadows kiss her skin, teasing over her thighs, and Tooth wriggles feebly, cheeks heating in a blush. If Pitch knows his shadows are being mischievous, he makes no sign of it, holding her close to him and shuddering occasionally as a new influx of fear hits him with every indrawn breath.

“You really like this, huh,” Tooth whispers, and he makes a sound that is half agreement, half blissful sigh.

“Who doesn't enjoy satisfying a _craving?”_ His arms tighten around her, a clawed fingertip tracing a light circle on her stomach.

Tooth coughs, and clears her throat. _“Pitch.”_

“Yes?”

“Let me _go.”_

He snuffles a moue of disappointment, hiding his face childishly against her neck as if he can pretend he hasn't heard her words. In a muffled voice through a mouthful of feathers, he mumbles, “Do I _have to?”_

Tooth hardens her tone against the slight smile on her lips. “Yes,” she says firmly.

With a huff, he drops her several thousand feet up.

Tooth plummets, shrieking, for half a moment before her wings start working and she rises. Shooting Pitch a deeply displeased glare, she rolls her eyes at his confusion.

“And then you wonder why you remain alone,” Tooth snipes, and Pitch smiles at her like she is the breaking of dawn.

“I'm not alone,” he says cheerily, “I have you, even if I'm not allowed to _hug_ you, I have the Fearlings, the Dream P-”

“Pitch, there is a difference between a _hug_ and a surprise death grip thousands of feet above solid ground!” Tooth yelps, and he sniffs dismissively.

“You have wings.”

“You _dropped me!”_

“You _have wings.”_

Tooth throws her arms up in exasperation. “Argh! Why are you so- so _male?!”_

Tilting her wings, she shoots down towards a rooftop and alights delicately, Pitch blurring out of the shadows behind her, looking faintly sheepish. She can feel his presence like an itch, but doesn't respond. Instead, she watches the lights blink on from tortured sleepers waking from their terrible nightmares, the soft murmur of crying children, and feels horribly, disgustingly guilty.

_His existence depends on their misery._

“Tooth?” She can hear him shifting from foot to foot behind her, nervous, definitely uncomfortable, the fear bubbling beneath his skin making him antsy. He pads closer, hesitates, and then slides into a kneel.

She sighs heavily, no longer in the mood to deal with his blindness. “ _What?”_ It comes out as too snappish, and she winces.

He flinches, and his eyes quickly lower. When he speaks, it is soft, lost-sounding. “Are you angry with me?”

“No, Pitch,” she tells him, turning to face him. She cups his chin and lifts his head so he is looking at her, the powerful ochre gaze still able to have an effect on her. Her thumb rubs his chin, pulling at the line of his lips, and he leans into her touch with something that almost sounds like a sniffle.

It seems the high from the fear is deserting him now, because distress creases his brow, and he hunches in on himself like a crow curling up from the world. A shadow hovers tentatively at Tooth's wrist, like it wants to wrap around her and hold her close, but it takes only a quelling glare and Pitch shrinks further, the shadow disappearing.

Somehow, the obedient action makes her feel worse, and she crouches down to be on a level with him. He doesn't know how to react to this power-change – she knows he likes her to loom over him, feels uncomfortable if she elevates him over herself, but Tooth knows it is important that he is able to see them both as equal.

Because they are. No matter how much Pitch enjoys the illusion of her control, no matter how much _Tooth_ enjoys it, they are doing both of them a disservice if they pretend that he isn't what he is, and all that entails.

Nightmare King, dethroned, predator, person.

So much of this strange, bizarre element to their interaction is nonverbal, instinctive. Tooth barely understands it, knows it frightens and confuses Pitch almost as much as it does her. She can see it, when he looks at her, glazed and trembling and half drowned in some echoing escape yet still desperate with fear.

She doesn't like to see him afraid.

The truth is that Tooth does hold power over Pitch, a tremendous amount, and she can't deny it feels manipulative to take advantage of his amnesia in order to know him. It makes her feel vaguely sick, knowing that if Pitch were in his right mind, he would vehemently refuse to be treated like this.

“I'm not angry with you,” she repeats, softly, and his head falls forward, so that their foreheads are pressed together and his eyes are boring into hers, her fingers trapped over his lips, a tacit barrier.

He opens his mouth, as if to say something, perhaps, but then closes his eyes, frowning in anguished sorrow. Tooth traces the shape of his lips, feeling the bumps of his teeth underneath, and closes her eyes too.

_The shadows won't attack me,_ she thinks sadly, and for a moment pauses, on the cusp of a new age. She could trigger his memories, and in doing so, would lose him. 

A guilty thought occurs to her, and it sickens her even as much as she desperately, suddenly wants it. She could keep him. Like this, ignorant of his past. She could tell the others it just didn't work.

_No,_ and she knows she couldn't do that. It would tame him, break him, hold him back from himself and it is not fair. The Guardian in her knows it, she knows it, but the aching part of her that begs for her Watcher to stay whispers, quiet and tempting, in the back of her mind.

_I could heal him, and let him go, or keep him._

It's not that she couldn't make being kept good for him – he likes her palace, he likes her, he likes... this, whatever it is. But it's not healthy. It's not fair.

_This isn't the Watcher,_ she thinks. She doesn't know if it is Pitch Black, this vulnerable softness lying beneath his cracked exterior like the padding of a coffin. Tooth doesn't know him, and she won't ever have the chance.

_Once I give them back... he'll be gone again. And it's my fault._

Something wet splashes his cheek, and Pitch blinks his eyes open in surprise. She's crying, and automatically he reaches to comfort her. No, she can't be sad, she can't be scared, he hates her tears more than he hates her fear.

Before he has an opportunity to speak, she pushes a finger into his mouth. Pitch's head jerks back a little, startled, and she opens her beautiful Arabian silk eyes to give him a terribly aching stare that makes him feel like she is looking down on his corpse instead of living flesh.

“Tooth,” he tries to say, but her fingers in his mouth muffle his voice.

A wry smile. “Don't be frightened,” she whispers, “Trust me.”

She spreads her fingers in his mouth, encourages him to bite down ever so lightly, so that her fingers are in contact with every single one of his teeth. Her nails scrape the back of his throat at one point, and she murmurs a soft apology as he suppresses his gag reflex. 

She frowns in concentration, and a tingling builds up in his teeth, sparking up the nerves into the gums, making his entire jaw feel awkward and loose. Pitch winces and tries to pull away, because the heat in the tingling is swiftly becoming uncomfortable, but there is suddenly a hand on the back of his skull, holding him in place, and a steely look in Tooth's eyes that makes him feel unaccountably flushed.

_Trust me,_ she said, and Pitch clamps down on the pricks of fear he feels at this unfamiliar new ritual. He trusts her. He knows that Tooth will not hurt him.

Instead, he goes lightly limp in her grasp, staring blindly up at the pale blues of dawn beginning to streak the horizon. It's a lovely dawn, he thinks. Tooth ought to be watching it.

The prodding of his teeth increases, and whiteness eclipses his vision. Crackles of something fire hot seeps into his mouth, futilely, he swallows. It tastes of freshness, the heat of Indian summers, the kiss of the wind over soft feathers, and all of a sudden it feels as if he is right back at the Tooth Palace, the lilt of her voice, the glimmer of the rosy walls, the twittering of the birds, the only home he has ever known. His eyes lid heavily, he feels the warmth of all that safeness, that remembered comfort and kindness suffusing his body like a golden beam.

He never wants to wake up from this lovely dream.

But something is happening. Fire glitters in the edge of the glorious illusions, fire that breathes with the songs of a past he no longer remembers. He hears a girl's laughter, sees the brilliance of hair whiter than a moonbeam, feels the sway of a rhythm he's never heard possessing his body. The effusive kiss of stardust, golden lips and a woman's body, dark eyes and dark hair, teasing little smile.  _You, my dear General, are an_ idiot.  _A pretty one._ A name that rings in his mind like an ancient church toll. 

He remembers the heft of a scythe in his hands, the heat of an engine's blast, the snap of sails in a breeze, a vast ocean of star studded blackness.  _Orion quadrant sector 44-_ He remembers language so light and lilting it falls from his tongue like spun sugar, cherry lipstick taste on his tongue, a hand in his collar tugging him towards a bed with sheets so soft and white it feels like clouds against their sweat-slicked skin.  _Come here, you silly soldier._ He remembers the tickle of hair against his chin, the sleepy warmth of a slumbering child, something metallic and warmed by the heat of his skin bouncing against his chest.  _Promise?_

He remembers the delicate blush of a giddy star, cloudkissed softness nuzzling against his neck –  _thank you for saving me-! -_ the swirl of a heavy cloak around his ankles, gleam of medals on his chest, the discomfort of ill fitting court clothes, shined boots, smooth plating of armour gleaming in the mirror, sleepless nights and empty beds, tiredness and melancholy, darkness that festers in his breast and 

_Doors so great and huge they blot out the sky, the groove of a handle cutting into his palm and the hiss of whispers in voices in the ear spinning and spitting and then darkness and -_

_n-o-t-h-i-n-g._

Someone is screaming.

His throat feels hoarse and scraping. The shadows are howling he is 

- _dying_

he cannot breathe

where is she- who?

His head is splitting in two, the shadows are screeching in  _fury_ and  he is dying he is dying surely that is what this agony means he is dying he is dying he cannot exist there is light everywhere burning blistering hated light where is his shadow where is his shadow where is his shadow-

“PITCH!” a distressed scream, female (he thinks)

he is fitting on the floor his fist hits something soft and there is a shout

he screams.

“ _ **SERAPHINA!”**_

Everything goes still. His heart is hammering in his ears. There are gasping breaths nearby, soft hands cradling his face. Something wet trailing down his cheeks (his tears). He feels mindless, lost.

“Pitch?”

He opens his eyes, sees her face, soft with worry, a bruise already blossoming on her cheekbone. She smiles at him tearfully, so happy, so glad to see him aware, and he sniffles, abruptly is sobbing.

She holds him, rocking him gently and making soft hushing noises. Her fingers ruffle through his hair in a soothing, repetitive motion. It makes him feel grounded.

“Tooth?” he asks, and she nods.

“Yes, yes, that's me,” she confirms, kisses his tear streaked cheeks spontaneously. “I'm so, so sorry, I didn't know that would happen, I-”

“Who is Seraphina, Tooth?”

Her face falls slightly. “What do you remember?”

He struggles for words. “...Fragments...Space, a woman, a girl. A locket. Ships. A little gold person.” He looks down at his hands. “...I was...human, I think. There was no fear.”

“Holy molars,” Tooth mutters, “how many sets of repressed memories do you have?”

“I don't know, but I do have a _terrible_ headache.”

 


	8. Chapter Seven

Something has changed, something in his headspace has been rearranged, a door locked has fallen open, leaving behind the true festering landscape too long seeped with the dark. Barriers around his mind have collapsed, the walls of ancient empires tarnished verdigris green chipped back to reveal something of that shining copper they had once been.

Gold, even buried for thousands of years, does not tarnish, remains as pure and brilliant as the day it was sealed away. But Pitch's memories are not golden ones, they are the memories of a man so distant as to be entirely unfamiliar. Nothing in that mysterious past is relevant to him, and he works through pages of notebooks, scribbling frenzied jottings of another man's life, someone else who has once lived in his head, but it is nothing to him.

Tooth reassures him, stays close to him, in the days after the events of the hunt. She is wary around him, seems to be waiting, but the memories are slow, reluctant in coming, and more frustrating than anything else.

“He had a daughter,” Pitch says, one day, out of the blue.

“Kozmotis?” asks Tooth carefully, and Pitch nods.

“He didn't even remember her name, in the end,” Pitch notes, reflectively, and continues nibbling on a peach.

There is nothing the Guardian of Memory can say to that, so she simply hums and directs her fairies.

He comes out with these things often, small titbits that are sometimes bland, sometimes heartbreaking, but he doesn't seem to be particularly bothered by it, so she doesn't make an issue of it. She sometimes catches Pitch staring at his hands, flexing them with wonder, and he'll relate some magnificent thing he's seen Kozmotis doing – a military manoeuvre, something similar, as if he can't quite accept that his tired shadow-stained body had once been something so skilfully great.

Tooth struggles with that same awkward reverence, when Pitch leans into her or murmurs something sweet or wicked she is abruptly hit by the realisation that he is thousands of years old, that his eyes have seen terrible wonders beyond anything she has, that the store of knowledge and memory in his brain is so vast and yet untapped. She has always known that Pitch is old, as old as Sandy, at least, but she'd never thought they'd lived before _Earth._

It feels as if Tooth is hovering on the edge of a precipice, waiting for something to happen. There can be no way that Pitch is taking everything so calmly. He has nightmares every night, but seems to brush it off. There's no way that this can continue, and it isn't healthy if it does. He's bottling everything up inside, waiting for the pressure to burst.

And one lazy, summery night, it does, in a way that Tooth never could have anticipated.

* * *

Pitch bolts awake in the dead of night. He does not know why he slept when it is _his_ time. His time – when the world is _dark and quiet and silent and still_ to make way for the whispering voices in his head. The Moon stares at him without question, grey clouds scudding across the bejewelled sky, obstructing the alien glisten of the stars from view. He is glad. He does not like to see the stars.

Especially not the ones that walk on the surface of the planet still, _and smile and smile and smile like they don't have dark secrets_ , that smile and _smile_ like they know how to break him in half, that _smile_ with straight rows of even teeth that match the raking scars down his skinny back.

He hates that one star very much. Greed clenches cold in his stomach as he fantasises about laying waste to the star's robust dreamscape just like he has done to all those fragile-spun-sugar humans.

He chases these thoughts like a hound after an elusive fox, running from the trampling hooves of the hunters that roam swiftly behind him; he knows the barrels of their guns are aimed, smoking, for the weak, flinching little soft parts in Pitch that still ache like feathers brushing smooth over his sensitive flesh.

The Nightmares stomp and whinny, ever raucous, but Pitch curls up on himself. He gnaws on his spindly fingers, scraping teeth against bone. His tears are very quiet. Screaming out for a saviour is pointless in the dark, where no one listens for the whimpers of a tortured monster.

But he is not alone – he never has been.

Shadow-soft, the brush of his hair against his sallow cheeks feels like the caress of a tender hand, wiping his tears away. Rivers swim turgid underneath his veins, dark and deep and cold, summery shadows that kiss shade over the poisonous purple of bruises blooming on his wrists and fists where he has kicked out in the night, held in the claws of the nightmare. The shroud of night sways silently to settle over the gazebo _,_ dipping in under the heavily decorative fabrics sheltering the open sides, presses close and familiar to its beloved servant. The Fearlings mutter and murmur in a cacophony of low, slithering voices, damp scales over stone, the eerie susurrus somehow comforting.

He has left one fabric covering pinned to the column of the gazebo,allowing the moonlight to spill across the satin pillows. It dyes everything safely monochrome, deepens shadows and paints the twisting shapes of the hanging leaves and gurgling brook to black velvet and unpolished silver; it catches in the shine of Pitch's eyes in the gloom.

The nightmare's uneasiness grips sickly in his knotting belly. He does not remember much, only that this one is very, very different from those esoteric glimpses of a life not his own; Kozmotis' life where everything is golden save the blood the widows weep onto the gravestones of their lovers.

It is not a Kozmotis memory that stamps with bloody ink on the ragged, scraped clean parchment of Pitch's brain. No. This memory hisses slick-shadow-seductive, sexy and all-consuming, the shrill screams that is his sweet dark accompaniment to a dance of the depraved. This is not a rusty broken Kozmotis memory, shining too bright, too sharp for Pitch's eyes to decipher, this is a memory of a _King,_ a _Nightmare King._

Pitch fears almost as much as he craves the thought that somehow... this memory is a _Pitch_ memory.

The actual contents of the nightmarish memory are shady and difficult to discern. He dimly recognises the shape of a cruel bright spear and a laughing boy. That awful cognizance sinks like a dreadfully familiar lodestone into an ache located in a starburst ridge of hard, raised skin over his sternum. He clutches it desperately and wonders why it suddenly hurts to breathe.

 _Tooth,_ he thinks, and simply the thought of her brings some peace to the haunted depths of his labyrinthine mind. He focuses on his memory of her, reconstructing her in his mind's eye. He knows her perfectly after this brief time, the overlay of her glossy feathers, deep sapphire blue fading to sharp jade green, her manicured nails, soft cupping hands, her warm lavender and amethyst eyes shaded by the sweep of her long elegant lashes, the blush of powder over her eyelids. He knows her smile, the peek of teeth so white and brilliant they remind him of the coconut milk she'd brought him to try once, laughing at his enthused face.

Thinking of Tooth always makes him feel strange, in a bizarre, unidentifiable way that does not quite feel like the nasty badness of the feelings the golden colours of sunset bring. He feels nervous around her, something tight and hot fluttering in his stomach, prickles sliding like sickness over his skin. He craves her touch with an awkward, oversized longing that lumps jaggedly in his chest and constricts his breathing when they are close.

He does not like those feelings so much as he likes the other ones – the warm undercurrents of safety and peace that leave him boneless and breathless with the force of something deep and consuming like the pull of tides and the flames that eat him up like the touch of sunlight made glorious. Sometimes Pitch thinks that perhaps Tooth is his favourite thing in the world – other times it is the drunk, giddy feeling he gets from fear.

Fearful and fretting from the nightmare, Pitch thinks longingly of her gentleness. Tooth would know how to soothe the thrumming anxiety from his bones, chiming in his blood. She is the Guardian of Memory, and this resurgence is something she would want to know about, he excuses to himself firmly.

Finally, he decides simply that he will visit her – despite knowing that Tooth works very hard and does not appreciate being woken up during her infrequent rests, as proved to him by a few forceful removals from her private nest while the mistress slept.

With determination burning in his gut, Pitch climbs silently out of his little gazebonest, padding bare-foot through the swaying plants, their luxurious perfume clinging from butterfly-delicate petals in all the most vivid colours, seeped of their vibrancy in the darkness. His gazebois the focal point of the courtyard garden, around which splays cultivated wildness, plants and fragrant blooms from all over the world but with an emphasis on Toothiana's birth country, nodding in their sleep and the still, hot wind. A deep, cool pool, round and reflecting the eye of the moon is padded with water lilies and small round stones, covered with moss and slippery to walk on takes up one quarter, rustling reeds springing around it. Small, intricately carved statues hide under the generous, sweeping leaves of the biggest plants.

Absently, he forms a shadow robe that feels far more familiar than the clothes Tooth has given him, forgotten in a neat pile inside the gazebo. The robe clings close, licks over his chest and legs like a lover, unconsciously teasing. It is a nightrobe, for her eyes only, though Pitch does not pause to consider his creation nor the easy skill with which it is made, previously unknown to him, unintentionally attractive and seductive as an afterthought.

He scales the walls of the palace with ease, clinging to the cracks in the stone like a monkey. Twittering fairies swoop dizzingly around his head, tugging playfully on his hair before zooming away to do their duties. Pitch smiles to watch them go, swift arrows in the night. Tooth's nest is high up, secluded in one of the palace's crowning spires, and he has to climb for a long time to reach it. His muscles warm from the exertion, and sweat gleams on his skin as his breath rasps in his throat. He is out of breath by the time he makes it to the top.

She is sleeping when he arrives, and for a moment Pitch hunches on the wide open gap in the wall used as an entrance, watching her. Her lips are curled up in a peaceful smile, and every so often her wings twitch. He wonders if she is chasing enemies in her sleep, accompanied by the wicked swords that hang above her head, ready to be used in an instant. She still keeps them sharp, and a suit of leather armour awaits war on a mannequin.

It is the sleeping chamber of a queen; everywhere rich silk fabrics hang, depicting bloody scenes from what he presumes is Tooth's history picked out in a careful hand that can only be her own. A thronelike armchair with modifications for wings sits before the wide sweep of her open door, a half-finished work left on an intricate puffy footstool. He cocks his head to peer at it, surprised when he recognises a figure that is distinctly himself.

Curiosity piqued, he hops down and scuttles towards the stool, cautiously unfolding the half-finished piece and evaluating it. The Pitch-figure appears to be sat on a mighty black steed, which is rearing towards the half-finished shapes of Tooth's Guardian friends, and in his hand there is an evil looking arrow-shaft, pointing directly towards the smallest but most defiant of all the Guardians, the star, who holds long tendrils of gold that enclose his friends, protecting them from harm. Other scenes occupy the edges of the fabric, a green Eden wrecked by more dark horses crushing tiny, brilliant eggs under their hooves, a pale boy who crouches in the lee of a monstrosity of ice and darkness, millions of cages holding Tooth's beautiful fairies, a spinning globe covered in black sand and another boy with golden sand blossoming from his fingertips.

Pitch scowls. He does not recognise this, and he does not like it, either. The image of Tooth's fairies in cages fills him with rage. He doesn't understand why she would possibly make something so horrible. How could any monster even conceive of caging the tiny, beautiful and cheerful little birds, with their gossamer wings and gleaming eyes?

He is annoyed enough to forget to be careful, so when he approaches Tooth he is not quiet but instead, calls out.

It is a deadly mistake.

Within an instant, the slumbering queen snaps awake and yanks her swords free, springing on Pitch in a flurry of whirling blades. He yelps and stumbles back, directly through the open portal and would have fallen, were it not for a hand shooting out and grabbing his wrist at the last minute. Dangling, Pitch blinks in shock as Tooth's sword presses to his throat.

She is breathing heavily, her eyes alight with excitement, but steadily, the fire of bloodlust seeps out to be replaced with something a little like sheepishness. “Pitch?” she asks, bemused. “What are you doing here?”

He frowns at her. “I had another memory,” he says, a little petulantly.

For a moment, Tooth stares, until something like weariness chases over her face and she sighs. Hauling him back inside, she sheaths her swords above the bed and checks him over for wounds, muttering a slightly begrudging apology along with a fierce reminder not to wake a sleeping warrior by surprise. _Honestly._

Pitch thinks he certainly won't forget that rude awakening.

Tooth pauses, examining his garments for a moment. She blushes, faint in the darkness but easily discernible to Pitch. “One day,” she mutters, “One day I'll make you wear clothes I don't feel bad as Guardian letting you go out to scare children in.”

Pitch glances down at himself, slightly insulted. “You're wearing less than me,” he points out dryly, and Tooth considers his point with a shrug.

“That's fair,” she says, and takes his hand, leading him out onto the balcony. They sit down together, feet hanging over the ledge and kicking in the open air. A breeze whispers around his calves. “You said you had a memory resurgence.”

Pitch stares down at his hands, the unsettling feelings from the nightmare returning all at once. “Yes.” His answer is quiet and almost meek – suddenly, he wishes he had stayed back in the gazebo instead of going to Tooth.

She wraps her arm around his shoulders, her soft body nestling into his own. The comforting gesture makes him sigh shakily, she has no idea how she makes him feel, this combination of confused and safe. Shyly, he leans into her touch, and her arm slips to a more comfortable position around his thin waist. Pitch really is too tall, sometimes. He leans his cheek against her feathered crown, closing his eyes as her feathers tickle his skin. She smells of Indian spice and something cool and clean.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Pitch looks at Tooth. His eyes glitter like forgotten halfpennies in the gloom, the shape of his proud features just discernible in the soft blur of the charcoal night, the arch of his brow, the aquiline line of his nose, the pout of his thin, sulky lips.

His voice, when he speaks, is mumbling and rough, confused, lilting and lurching from sentence to sentence without ever bothering to finish, conflicted, uncertain. “There is a boy. He is laughing. He is laughing at me, and I hurt... here,” he places his palm over his chest, and his knuckles whiten with force as he shudders. “He sticks... he sticks the lance in me, and it goes right through.”

Tooth's hand caresses the sharp blades of his shoulders under the whisper-fine shadow robe, identifying another ridge of scar tissue on the other side of his body. The story makes her feel sick even as she recognises it. This story too hangs on her wall, the story of how Nightlight had brought Pitch down at the Battle of the Moon Clipper.

He is already remembering events of the Nightmare King. How long will it be until he remembers every injustice at their hands, how long will it be until he rips away from her in disgust, until the villainous, evil Pitch Black she had known before eclipses this tender, softer and sweeter version? Tooth bites her lip.

Everything is blurred in her mind. She doesn't know what parts of Pitch are simply him, and what parts of him are caused by the hatred and rage. There is the cruel, vicious act of killing Sandy, but beyond his cruellest deeds, Tooth realises she knows the old Pitch not at all. All she can judge by is their long history of fighting- but Toothiana does not _want_ to fight.

Perhaps... once he has regained his memories... he will see how she cared for him in his weakness... perhaps, he will not want to fight. It is a fragile hope, but it is her only hope of keeping him, so she clutches tightly to his thin frame and believes with all her heart.

“I'm sorry,” she says helplessly, because there's nothing else to say, but he turns to her with a soft smile on his lips. He is thankful for simply someone to look at him and listen. It is more than he remembers, feels new enough that somehow Pitch knows this is not a usual thing. He is not certain he wants to remember times of pain where Tooth does not help him.

He is so beautiful it makes her ache. Despite the darkness, despite the shadows under his skin – no. Because of the darkness, the wickedness, the sly cruelty that is as familiar to Pitch Black as fun is to Jack Frost, the fear that shifts in his aura, coils poisonous dark nicotine, dangerously addictive. She couldn't hope to separate him from it and somehow expect it to still be _him._ And doesn't she enjoy his company, enjoy seeing him – all of him, even the dark, dank parts that make him such a good monster?

“You're beautiful,” he says, and she laughs a little, because _oh moons,_ now they're even thinking in sync?

“I'm an awful Guardian,” she confesses.

His haunting eyes are obscured by a brief blink. “Why? Because of me?” He tilts his head. “I don't think this is bad. It doesn't feel bad.” He makes it sound so simple. “You're very good at your job. You are a good Guardian. Why does caring for me make it any different?” He looks down as he says that, flushing slightly. He fiddles with his hands, appearing to realise how it could be taken differently.

Tooth is silent, contemplating. She traces his profile. A new, shy thought makes itself known to her. Maybe... maybe...

“Maybe one day,” she says in a breathless rush, “When... when you're better, we could...” Maybe one day, wanting Pitch Black and being a Guardian could exist together. Maybe they could make it that way. Caught up in her unexpected boldness, she catches his chin and presses their foreheads together, his surprised eyes boring holes in her own.

Her words trail off, stuck somewhere in a world where they are somehow important. The way he is looking at her forbids speech. He bites his lip in a snaggletooth smile, tentative and shy, and once she is looking at his mouth she can't stop and maybe she is going to hell for this but Tooth finds she doesn't care, not when his lips are so soft, so surprised and pliant. The kiss lasts for a matter of seconds before Tooth is pulling away, shocked but not regretful, not yet, and Pitch is staring back, wide-eyed.

“Pitch?” she says, more of a question without an answer, and he swallows.

“Tooth.”

Their lips meet again, hesitant brushes, interspersed with soft partings that puff each other's breath across their faces. His lips are thin, the ridges of his teeth almost discernible, but his tongue is sinuous and long, wicked, curling around her own like a beckoning hand of temptation. She curses him in her mind – of course his kiss would be as damningly addictive as the rest of him.

He tastes of wine and ash, black snowflakes and something electric that makes her feathers prickle with expectation. He breathes sighs into her mouth, swallowed up by Tooth's lips, moving chastely, lovingly over his own, the sacrosanct whisper of prayer. His thick locks are soft in her hands, the curve of his skull obliging as he eagerly follows her unspoken commands, any inexperience made up for by his enthusiasm.

When they break apart again, both of them are breathing heavily, and Pitch looks almost wrecked already. Tooth presses their foreheads together again as they both try to catch their breath, feeling something that feels very much like heartache in her chest.

“You're going to hate me,” she whispers, and hugs him tight while she still can.


	9. Chapter Eight

She is beautiful when she dances.

It does not matter if she meant it to be a dance, because it looks like one to him. No other movement could be so graceful, so balanced and fluid, and if she does it with a sword in her hand and bared teeth, Pitch thinks that a warrior queen's ballroom is one of blades and battle anyway. Her lithe form twists, pirouettes and then _slashes_ downwards with astonishing fury, and Pitch shudders to think of her opponent.

He almost pities them. He almost envies them.

The honour of fighting a queen herself is not lost on him, and it would be a triumph to lose to her.

He doesn't know if she has noticed, but he is transfixed by her every movement, even the play of light over her glossy feathers seeming somehow, unbearably sensuous, forcing too-bright memories to crowd into his mind, memories of a lower, darker setting, when the night had fallen and she was kissing him, her lips tasting of jasmine and mint, her softness pressed close to him – how small she had felt, yet how incredibly strong, powerful, confident, her nails sharp pinpricks against his throat as her feathers caressed his skin.

Pitch gulps and crosses his legs.

He is sat on a beautifully carved wooden chair, one presumably made for Tooth's Guardian friends, because it has a tall back that he can lean against, not open like all the others that allow for wings. One of the watching tooth fairies sitting on his shoulders titters, and his cheeks warm. “Shut up,” he mutters.

They are out in one of the sweeping, open balconies that wrap around the spires of the Tooth Palace. The sun has set, but the light has not faded, the perfect time for them both, when the shadows are only just beginning to deepen and the light sharp enough for a fairy queen's eyes. The splashes of colour are incandescent in the sky, a vivid backdrop to a masterpiece, and the colours of the Palace shimmer, coral pinks and royal golds, rose reds and gilt edging become something truly magical. The richness of the place is steeped with nature's finest glory, and far below the jade canopies of the mysterious jungle are laid out like an unrolled, emerald map. It is a beautiful view, but it is nothing compared to her. A breeze ruffles the sticky heat, soothes the sweat on Pitch's brow – sweat he wished could claim was only from the environment's tests.

The heat of her attention is a fire, one that catches and burns in the pit of his stomach when a sidestep brings her fierce, shining bright eyes on him, one that spreads like hellfire and damnation in his veins, one that chars away all his breath when she stalks closer. Her hips sway, her swords held ready, and Pitch clutches his chair so hard the wood creaks under his clammy hands.

His mind is a flurry of panic and nervousness that clenches like swooping butterflies in his stomach. He is held bolt-upright against the chair, and the Fearlings coo and rub reassuringly against the underside of his skin, trying to work the stress out of his muscles. A few discreetly darken the shadows of the loose robe that Pitch is wearing over the top of Tooth's gifts to protect his skin (she'd forced them back on him, claiming the nightrobe was too distracting for anyone to think through, Pitch had been too pleased at her admittance that she thought he looked good in it to protest). The darkened robes make him look a little less flushed.

“You're staring,” she whispers, stopping right in front of him. She holds the sword to his throat and Pitch gulps at the cold, icy weight of it against his vulnerable neck.

“I can't help it,” he murmurs back, just like they have a secret, “You're beautiful.”

She blushes, and her feathers shiver with delight. Her sword presses even tighter against his neck, cutting a thin line. Blood wells up, and Pitch's eyes lid and his breath grows heavy. He cannot move, but if he could, he'd be squirming.

“Flatterer,” she breathes.

Pitch licks his lips and Tooth bites hers.

He wants to kiss her so badly. The Fearlings thrum under his skin, encouragement quickening his blood, and without thinking Pitch's form blurs into shadow. He presses forward, the sword parting his shadow-flesh like smoke, but it cannot hurt him like this.

She starts and he feels a lightning burst of fear that he's impaled himself, but the next moment he's gone solid again beside her, a victorious grin on his lips.

“Is that... _all,_ Toothiana?”

“Oh, you are most certainly _on,_ Mr Black,” Tooth hisses, her face lighting up with eagerness, and Pitch has barely enough time to form a scythe out of darkness before she whirls at him.

The Fearlings scream in joy at the glory of the fight, and Pitch sinks into the mindstate whether they are neither separate nor whole, shadow and flesh made together, a partnership bound by age and familiarity, a deadly coalition. His scythe is wickedly sharp, and Tooth's swords aim to destroy – neither one pulls their punch.

They fall into a rhythm well-practised, and Pitch doesn't stop to think how he knows to anticipate the parry half a moment before it happens, how he knows exactly where to push so her defence falters at the opportune moment. They are evenly matched and the battle moves like a dance, a display, glittering eyes and plumes of darkness to vibrant feathers and flaring wings. She has the advantage of the air, but Pitch has the growing night, the darkening shadows, and it is not a battle of strength but one of time – Tooth knows the longer it takes to subdue him, the harder it will be.

She attacks viciously, her swords in a flurry of energy, her fairies divebombing him whenever they can, forcing him to call up more Fearlings to immobilise them in their black syrupy grips. Their milky white eyes gleam with hunger as they lick at the fairies' fear. The little jewelled fairies giggle and wriggle obligingly.

A rough blow from the scythe sends Tooth spinning off the edge of the platform, and Pitch crouches, the scythe held at a ready. She appears up over the edge, and grins.

Her wings flare and arch, cupping the air as she twists, then plummets straight towards him, like an arrow loosed from the taut string of a bow. Her swords are aimed straight towards his heart, and Pitch waits, not moving, as she shoots faster, gaining momentum. He calls her bluff, and just as her wings flare to catch the wind, bringing her to an abrupt halt, he side-steps.

She is caught by surprise as he grabs the sensitive base of her wings. Tooth cries out and Pitch's scythe dissolves. He presses his chest into her back, pins her arms.

Panting heavily, Tooth squirms against his vice-like grip. Pitch licks the nape of her neck, his tongue writhing between her feathers to taste her sweat. She flinches and gasps out a laugh.

“Are you going to hurt me?” she asks, voice vibrating with amusement, and Pitch smirks against her shoulder, devilish, but not a devil.

“Do you really think I would?” His voice is rich and silky, wraps around her like a blanket, and Tooth thinks idly how far they've both come since the frightened man pinned to a tree trunk in a snowy forest.

His other hand rubs the base of her wings again, and she fights to keep her shudder in. Judging by the way he immediately repeats the action, she has failed. His fingers are quick and clever, finding the places that will make her sigh and twist, and she sags into his hold, her wings fluttering as he trails kisses over her spine and shoulders. He carefully avoids her wings, knowing that they are tender.

“No,” says Tooth. She believes it. She knows he won't – and the realisation that she trusts him with her life is not so surprising as she thought it would be.

Teasingly, she rocks back against him, chuckling as her actions elicit a gasp, and then a little whine.

His grip gentles, and she waits, a small grin hidden by her hanging head. Once he relaxes, she seizes the opportunity and smashes her head back, catching him on the nose. He yelps, and she elbows him roughly in the gut, wincing as bone connects with bone. He's _still_ too skinny, and her elbow throbs from the hardness of his ribs. In an instant, she whirls around and secures his wrists, kicking him once more in the gut to drive him to his knees.

Twisting his arms behind his back, she leans over him and loops her arm through them, forcing his shoulders to bunch unnaturally. He grunts, head pushed into her stomach, her feathers tickling his aching nose. It isn't broken, _just._ She threads her free hand through his hair, scratching his scalp roughly with her sharp nails. His breath quickens against her skin and he quivers, shock blurring quickly into something else just as vibrant and electric.

“Are you going to hurt me?” he repeats, and Tooth tilts his head up by yanking on his hair. She looks down at his face.

“Do you really think I would?” she teases.

Pitch bites his lip so hard he tastes blood. “No. If I asked you to... _yes.”_

She kisses him, softly, sweetly, deeply, and for a long while, all they know is each other.

* * *

Later, they sit and talk.

Pitch is idly pecking at a melon, his sharp teeth gnawing on the rind. His Fearlings lap over the fruit curiously, their little claws and teeth scoring little holes from which they suck the juice. Tooth is peeling an orange, businesslike, one peeled segment after another disappearing behind her soft lips – still a little flushed and swollen from the aftermath of their kisses.

They are still on the balcony, furnished now with a table and another chair, for Tooth. Both are made of pale metal worked in the shapes of harts and vines, and Pitch would have found the disparity between his heavy wooden behemoth and the light, airy designs of the table and Tooth's chair aggravating, were it not for the teasing edge to her smile that made him guess she has set it up that way on purpose. A bowl is between them, laden with sumptuous and plump fruits.

It is full night now, and Tooth has set candles that flicker and waver in the low winds on the table. They cast shifting shadows over Pitch's lean, long face, dancing in the hollows of his eyesockets and gaunt cheekbones. His eyes shine with a light of their own, shimmering with liquid silver from the Fearlings within.

The candlelight is kind to them both, it finds the glossiest highlights in Tooth's feathers, deepens the sapphire shade of her hips and legs to velvet black, richens and intensifies the vivacity of the green, and makes her wings, for once still, gleam like pale pink cellophane, dragonfly glass.

The cadence of their conversation is easy and flowing. With affable agreement, they move from one subject to another, touching on topics and continuing before they could be mired in too intense a debate. Pitch tells stories from the Golden Age, stories that ring with long-forgotten tunes, and Tooth sits and drinks in the memories of something long-lost.

He tells her of the ballad of Cygna, his tone belying his repressed amusement as he did so – a love ballad both over-romantic and ridiculous, a ballad that Kozmotis had on several occasions wished endlessly scoured from the minds of men. Defiant, Pitch retells it, preserving it to the Guardian of Memory so that it might never be unknown, and foils that long-distant brother with indecent glee.

Tooth listens, uneasy at the message of the story, a hungry, greedy star that sweeps down from the heavens and beguiles a young lover, who after his eventual departure, withered for forbidden love for him. The story, while innocent-sounding, whispers hate of the greed of the stars, and Tooth thinks of Sandy's race, of Sandy's age, and what she does not know of her good friend.

If loving – yes, loving! – Pitch has taught her anything, it is that no one is as they first appear, and even the belief that you have known someone for so very long does not mean that you have the slightest estimation of who they are.

Pitch, unknowing of her dubious thoughts, of which he certainly would have approved, glances at the sky, royal black velvet, studded with the pinnacle points of stars. He offers her a grievous sort of smile.

“You should rest, Toothiana,” he suggests quietly, and Tooth shifts in her chair.

Her muscles ache from her exertion, and her mind is tired and slow from the business of the day. Her little fairies are doing an admirable job of taking over while she breaks with Pitch, but Tooth needs rest, needs rest to keep the efficiency of the collecting service optimum. As much as it pains her to take her leave of her shadow-stained Watcher, Tooth must admit defeat. She will see him in her dreams anyway, gallowglass flaming golden eyes, deceptive and half-hidden, shy, teasing, bold all at once.

She sighs and rises, exhaustion making the blur of her wings ache sharply. She winces and he rises with the abrupt suddenness that he has, cold face but fiery eyes.

“May your sleep be untroubled, Toothiana,” Pitch murmurs, and sketches a bow, catching her hand and raising to his thin lips for a brief kiss.

She blushes, her fairies swoon dramatically from the sky, and Pitch's smoky eyes shimmer with laughter. “So long as you do not bother me, I'll be fine!” she responds tartly, regaining herself, and Pitch bows in a complete lack of remorse.

He watches her leave, her wings slicing the sky as she was born to do. A few of the fairies sigh and alight on his shoulders, and he peers sidelong at them. They are even more twittery than usual, giggling and sighing and fluttering their little wings, their shrill high peeping cutting off whenever Pitch looks at them.

“What?” he finally demands, and unanimously, the obstreperous little fairies point their needle-like beaks towards one of their fellows, who immediately squeaks and hides something behind her small back.

Pitch's brow arches smoothly. “Show me,” he orders, and a few of the fairies quiver and sigh at the command in his voice.

Odd little things.

The shy little fairy hops a little closer, and then glances to her fellows for support. A chorus of peeping crescendoes. The fairy makes her decision, and, with worshipful reverence, extracts a tooth from her bag. She rises on her tiptoes, proffering it to him. Pitch takes it cautiously between his long grey fingers.

It is an ugly specimen, grey and craggy, snaggle-toothed and worn. Certainly nothing like the pearly whites the fairies favour.

Pitch lifts his eyes, confused. “A tooth? Why would you want to show – oh!”

One of the fairies, impatient, has grabbed the tooth and struck it hard. All at once, Pitch feels an echoing ache in an empty space in his gums, a soreness that never has quite healed. He jerks back as his hand flies to his mouth.

Not just any tooth – _his_ tooth.

 


	10. Chapter Nine

Pitch sinks to his knees in the swiftly beckoning night. The Fearlings coo and stretch for him, but Pitch is blind even to their comfort in his distress. He is no idiot, he has lived long enough at the Tooth Palace to know what the teeth are used for, what the consequences of this could be.

With this tooth, ugly and insignificant-looking as it is, Pitch could potentially rediscover his whole past.

_I could know who I was. Who I am._

His mind is a mess of confusion. If Tooth has known one of his teeth have been knocked free this whole time, waiting to trigger his memories, why hasn't she done it? She must know that Pitch wants his memories back.

 _Do you?_ The Fearlings whisper, and Pitch clutches his head in indecision, nails ridging into his scalp, burning eyes fixed on the innocuous tooth, laying exactly where he has dropped it, on the gleaming tiles of the Tooth Palace.

Does his past define him? Is he better off not knowing?

The fairies buzz around him, calling out their worry. They do not understand why he is acting this way. They thought he would be pleased with their gift – they had to search very hard and carefully to steal the tooth from their queen's chambers. They swoop in dizzying patterns, weaving with careful skill around the gloopy messes of the Fearlings, raising their sticky, infectious smoky hands to caress their beloved servant, pressing his nerves and manipulating the strings of his body. But even the recreated memory of feeding serves to only remind Pitch that there is one, very good reason why Tooth might have foregone showing his memories.

He recoils. The thought of her kind naivete when he started to become weak with starvation overrules him. Maybe Tooth has already shown that she doesn't want him, all of him. Maybe she is keeping him powerless, memory-less, for a good reason. Maybe for his own protection.

In the beginning, he thought himself a monster. Tooth's tenderness, her shining regard has mellowed him of the view, but now the doubt roars back. Is he a monster? Was, somehow, his past even _worse?_ Does he want to see it?

But Kozmotis' strange-shaped, unfamiliar memories have given him a hunger for knowing. Devouring the idyllic memories of another age has lit a flame in his gut, an unconscious desire to find his own semblance of _family,_ of _belonging_ that Kozmotis had known – what if he too had a wife or a daughter or a mother or a father...? He cannot imagine anything save Tooth, and the warmth in Kozmotis' memories feels like it eats him alive. He... he _wants_ to know who he was. If that person is so monstrous – well, surely not, otherwise Tooth wouldn't have saved him. No, Tooth doesn't make mistakes, Tooth is fierce, she wouldn't... she wouldn't take him in if she thinks there is no hope.

Unconsciously, he clutches to the thought, like a frightened child. Wherever he goes, however far he falls... he will have her, won't he? He doesn't want to take this step if it means losing her, but Pitch is greedy, he is selfish, he always will be. He wants both. He wants all of it. And he can't imagine a life without her by his side.

He wants to know for himself, and not because of her. Pitch does not remember existing outside of Tooth, and the thought that he was once a person in his own right, independent, is too alluring to ignore.

His lungs inflate with a preparatory breath. “Show me how to do it,” he whispers to the fairies, “...Show me who I was.”

The fairies look between one another for some clue as to what to do, their cheeping high and distressed. This is new, this is angry, and they thought the Angry-Pitch was gone. Now he is here, and giving them the same look he had when they were in the cages, bitter and hurt and angry, like they are the ones who have done him so grievously wrong, but his heart aches too much to hurt them for it.

Tentatively, one fairy picks up the tooth, and with encouragement, flies to his jaw. Hovering, she communicates in fleeting squeaks that he must open his mouth.

With soulless obedience, he does so, and with one last frightened look, the little fairy fits the tooth into the unhealed gum and draws on the latent power within her.

In an instant, he goes rigid and _howls._

The memories flash by in his mind quicker than disjointed camera snaps. Impressions of colour, scent, faded washed out memories kick again with their freshness – the girl with the grey eyes and the yellow coat, a locket dangling from her hand and a smile on her soft, sad lips, the boy who shone with a pale cold light, the rough bandit who snarled like he knew wildness, the old man who sighed with the creak of weariness, the brilliant golden man who wept soundlessly like he understood loss, the twitching rabbit who moved, jerky like he understood loneliness, and her, and her, all of them at once.

He remembers a girl in a cage, blood and feathers and gamboling monkeys, he remembers the cold snap of the Himalayas and great geese that soar majestically overhead with snowy white wings, a wild thing made Queen, a woman robed in stormclouds and bitterness, her words lashing and spitting like the crack of a golden whip across his flesh.

He remembers so many petty battles they all blur into one, he remembers the rise and fall of great civilisations, inventions, wars, lovers believing they were unique. He remembers the written word and the spoken, he remembers the thundering step of animals long wiped from the face of the earth. He remembers untamed, rolling vistas such as he has never seen, plains of ice and spires of black sand, the sureness of an arrow in his hand and the sobbing cries of an extinguished star. He remembers blood on his lips and flesh in his teeth, he remembers sickness in his veins and unbridled menace in the darkness, a flash of pale hair and a woman's cold, cruel smile, a son with eyes that smiled, deceptive, while his fingers hung with the strings of fate.

He remembers falling, he remembers burning, he remembers being victimised and hated by the sun itself, welcomed by the night, its howling, most devoted servant. He remembers her, that wild queen tamed and subdued, he remembers her hurts and her fierceness, he remembers every scar etched into his flesh with sudden, vivid clarity.

He remembers _feelings._ Rage, bitter and toxic. Starved lust, crouching over a sleeping form and glutting himself on their fear – _oh, the fear, so sweet and sharp and thick and warm like honey and syrup down his throat, choking him, choking him but he'd suffocate happy –_ the trail of black claws over tear-streaked cheeks. Loneliness, ill-fitting and agonising, like a throbbing jagged wound. Pain, so many different pains, torments and aches. Passion, all-consuming, vivid and intense from another life.

_So much hate._

It feels sick, dirty, he doesn't want it in his head. He screams, tries to block it out, but there's nothing to be done. He has started down this path, he must watch this depraved saga right till the end.

There is so much pain. The youthful love in Pitch's heart is crushed, warped and stained, and he thinks he is crying. It doesn't matter, the moments when he thought someone would care for his hurt are fleeting, just moments in ages of solitariness.

At some point he collapses, watching this dizzying, sordid tale flicker past his eyelids, cheek against the cool stone, tears on his cheeks and shadows writhing in his veins. He rediscovers himself as he loses himself, knows the ugly hate and vengeance that is what makes him up, not this airy freedom he did think. He is not _shadow-lover,_ he is not _walker-and-dancer,_ he is not the one who kisses beauty and emerges unscathed, he is _ugly-fears-messy-tears-crippling-anxieties,_ he is _haunted-nightmare-hollow-man,_ he is _slave-servant-beaten-broken-let-it-end,_ he is _the-faceless-watcher._

He has forgotten, but now his self is restored to him, and with cold ease the Fearlings seep poison once more. He belongs with all other things shoved under the bed, how could he have ever thought himself worthy to stand with her light? He is not the worth the air he breathes, he is the cast-out and the forbidden, and he is there to play villain for the Guardians' hero, shameless, faceless, heartless, painless villain, dragged away by his demons to play in insanity. He is born to be shoved-aside, he is created to be hated, he is triumphant when disgust is the only emotion they ever feel.

A king of empty cocoons, butterflies all gone, a watcher in empty halls, a man with a face like a perfect painting and a heart withered and old and ugly. Pure things, beautiful things, should not be forced to endure his existence, the only things worthy of his existence are the vilest and unholiest monsters that have ever roamed, _fear itself._

It is pale morning when the onslaught ends. The Watcher rises with an unholy howl, a storm of lashing darkness swallowing the sun, and escapes into the bitter black darkness. He reappears in a familiar wrecked dark clearing, where shadow-sand horses snort and pace, their wetly-gaping heads swinging, crowding, cautiously eager, ashamedly apologetic.

The Nightmares scrape their hooves, eye him consideringly, and the Nightmare King stands before them, restored in self-loathing, in hatred and ugliness, and convinced of his monstrousness, he growls his dominance.

The Nightmares bow to their master's might once more. There is no question of mercy.

 


	11. Chapter Ten

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the corniest chapter I've ever written. I hope you guys appreciate the sacrifice I made for this. Only the epilogue to go, and then Adronitis is done!

Tooth jerks. Halted mid-order, her wings seize. With the inevitability of a guillotine, she crashes.

The roseate stone is soapy silky-smooth to the touch. The air hangs, gravid and still. As one, every chirp stops in a piping throat. Every small shining eye turns to the crumpled queen. Her wings are haphazard; her glossy feathers sparkle and shimmer in a maelstrom of colour. She is a bundle of hollow bones and feathers and dragonfly-glass huddling at the bottom of the nest.

She feels it. How could she not?

The backlash of the memories' power echoes like a gunshot behind her ribs. Something wet and warm trickles over her hands. Her skull throbs and groans. Her hands feel for her torso, checking for a physical wound that bleeds like something inside. Smearing salt into her feathers, she grabs for her heart and keens. Her cry is shrill, carrying, and pained, a bird pinned and wings slowly, tortuously torn beyond repair.

Flightless, now, she scrambles for an answer in a hornet's nest of questions. A shudder wracks her and her sight blurs. The feeling pulses again, the triggered memories suck like a whirlpool into her strength. Like a cancer, it burrows within and infects her body with lethargy.

Every memory that flashes past his eyes works itself out of the Guardian of Memories, carving out its own pound of flesh as it goes. She convulses, trapped in a rictus of demand, the activated memories suckling more power from her than she has available.

Dangerously, her eyesight seeps with grey.

The fairies dart around their fallen queen, preening ruffled feathers with their sharp beaks, petting stained cheeks with tiny hands, wiping long lashes quiescent on skin whitened with exhaustion. Their queen's face pinches and draws, crowsfeet spiderwebbing over the cracks in her face, and the iridescence of her brilliant, beautiful, bright feathers dwindles to the palest pastel greens and faded, faint blues. Her wings are as insubstantial as stretched glass sheets, brushed with the breath of baby-pink sunsets. Like a child, she shivers in an unknown chill, closest to the icy cold kiss of Death as a spirit may come.

The little fairies whisper wise words of sweet comfort, nestling in familiar places and lending their strength to her ailing reserves. A few disappear in the caress of the careful wind, their strength sapped until the fragile bonds of teeth and memory and feathers that holds them together dissipates, and a single feather eddies in their place. But the others remain until the spell passes, and the rigidity of her body relaxes into slow, soft slumber.

Fittingly, she sleeps as she lives, brief, flighty, touching on one dream for half a moment before something compels her eyes to wander beneath her lids. In this way she manages an hour at best of stolen rest, before her restless lids part, and her dim eyes struggle to focus. Her mind, of a sharper quality, achieves that quality almost instantly with a quickness honed from the prey instincts of a bird on wing.

Her first word is a slur, a confusion of sighs and half-formed noise from her uncooperative lips. “Pitch...” she breathes, “the...tooth.”

The fairies ruffle their wings guiltily. Even at half-mast, their queen's glare is impressive, and while her addled brain takes a moment longer than usual to make sense of the words in the language they share, it is quick enough that alarm crosses her face immediately.

The fairies, they explained, had not anticipated that the draw on their collective power, on their queen's power, would be so severe. Pitch has unlocked many repressed memories, from right back to his conception as the Nightmare King to the present day. The fairies have attempted to control the influx to stop his brain buckling under it all, but Pitch's Fearlings have been too wily, and eventually, Pitch escaped through the liquid darkness.

“But... his tooth... I put it-” Tooth asks, dazed still and struggling to sit up.

The fairies all shuffle and avoid her eyes. A few wings droop in shame. All at once, Tooth is surrounded by very shamefaced and abashed fairies, scuffing the ground with their feet and generally all looking at someplace other than her.

Tooth sighs and pinches the bridge of her nose. “You stole it,” she says flatly, and the fairies duck their heads and chirp agreement in very small little voices.

“This is a mess,” Tooth whispers. Pitch wasn't ready, he still isn't. He must be in so much pain, so very confused and hurt and lost and bewildered and it is all her fault. If she had prepared him earlier...If she had not been so selfish and kept it from him, if she had trusted him a little more, if she had guarded the tooth better, if she had kept a better eye on him, Pitch would still be at the Tooth Palace, Pitch would still be with her.

“He's gone now,” she says, despondently, “He's gone and he won't come back. Not now that he remembers.”

The fairies glance at one another, feeling very awful indeed. A few fleeting whispers reach Tooth's ears and she frowns despite herself.

“Go to him? But he won't trust...” She trails off, and the fairies can see the moment that determination steels Tooth's spine. When is the last time she let what is wise get in front of what she wanted, and how well did that turn out? Well, this time, Tooth will follow her heart, not her head, her heart that sings love and her head that screams caution and fear.

And she knows exactly where Pitch Black has gone.

Where else, but the beginning? The _true_ moment of realisation, the very first understanding of her grievous wrong, slighting herself and him, an action born of violence and revenge that has birthed a slow tale of understanding and eventual love? Where else, but where she punched out his tooth and shook free those memories on that moon-shattered ice, right before his Nightmares bore him away screaming into the insanity of the Guardians' bitter hatred and blindness?

She has forgotten him once, Tooth swears she will never do it again.

* * *

Tooth all but stumbles out of the vortex of the snowglobe, hurtling into the ice and skidding across it. Ungainly in her exhaustion, she scrambles desperately to her knees and meets the wicked blade of that tar-black scythe, dropping acidic drops of darkness deep into the ice, clawing fractals of spiralling poison into the purity of Jack's ice.

The other Guardian is absent, and Tooth considers it fitting as Pitch whirls on her in fright. The scythe sits heavily in his hands, like the old grip is unfamiliar to him. His yellow eyes are wide and feverish bright, his skin blurs like wavering candle smoke. The Nightmares circle him like vultures, rearing and stamping their flashing, sharp hooves into the ice, carving up dangerous little splinters, a few of which split his skin. There is no blood, only shadow, pluming out like inky poison. His teeth are bared, craggy and yellow, and his night-dark robes, restored, swirl around him like the wings of a bat.

“Bird Queen!” he screams, violent, spraying spittle across the ice between them. “You tricked me!”

“Pitch, please, don't do this-!” Her voice is so weak, and her defence is brittle. She would be so easy to crush, friendless, powerless, broken down just as he had been that Easter, but this time he plays victorious conqueror, standing over her shattered body just as the Guardians have. She can only prays he would be more merciful than they have been.

She turns her head away, unable to bear the sight she knows is coming. His face contorting with hate, that animal, savage snarl, Watcher and King both, that great scythe falling, ready to slice her in two. Then there will be the pain, but Tooth cannot imagine it will match the agony in her heart. Something warm curves down her cheek.

But he does not attack.

Tense, she waits, but when no move is forthcoming, she opens her eyes tentatively. On her knees before him, she is the easiest prey, but he is frozen, his face twisted in miserable pain, black rain splashing down his hollowed cheeks and sharp jaw, lambent eyes tortured with indecision. His grip on the scythe tightens when he sees her eyes open, and he shakes it, impulsively, and shouts in a cracked voice, “Leave! Get away from me!”

A forbidden hope blossoms, and Tooth reaches up, like a supplicant to a traitorous god. He stumbles back in alarm, into the waiting teeth of his Nightmares, but shows no pain as their dagger jaws rend and tear at what is human left in him, flesh that pulls from his bones and shadow that can be snapped from his body.

“I know you're angry.” Her voice is shakier than a leaf on a breeze and how she wishes she could muster the strength to stand. “But please... just trust me, I never meant to hurt you – I, Pitch, I-”

He cuts her off with a rough gesture, and his Nightmares snap and surge eagerly, ready to drag him back down to the dark. “How can I trust you when you kept this secret from me?! _Who I am?!”_

Tooth's head bows, and her shoulders slump, because there is no defence she can muster for this accusation. Her eyes squeeze shut to keep the tears back, and it is difficult to talk past the lump in her throat, but these are words he needs to hear. These are words he has always deserved to hear, and words she has always needed to speak.

“I admit, I made a mistake in not telling you. You have a right to your past just as much as everyone else. I just – I couldn't bear the thought of hurting you. You were so happy... so innocent. It broke my heart to think of you seeing all that hatred and pain.”

She swallows. “It was selfish I know. I think... I needed time. Time to have it proven to me that not everything is as black and white as it seems, that not everyone is who I think they are. I admired the Watcher, maybe I was even infatuated... but-”

“Hasn't history proved that I can't be turned to the light?!” He interrupts her, voice frenzied, eyes aglow with something much like rage or hate, something that begs her not to speak further of things that are forever barred to his kind. “Hasn't it?! I am not some pretty thing for you to stomach – I am not wonder, or dreams, or hopes or fun or good memories! I am Fear and _I will not be tamed!”_

“I know that!” cries Tooth, and her voice is loud enough that for a moment he quietens. “I know.” She continues, in a softer tone. “I know and I am not asking you to. I know I'll never have the right to ask you to change and if you did, you wouldn't be _you.”_

He goes still. The scythe blurs around the edges, and begins to dissolve into finite grains of sand, slipping between his fingers. Outraged, the Nightmares snort at the falling grains, trying to inspire their master to take up arms, to fight, to drive the usurper howling from their territory. But Pitch is deaf to their insidious call, and the Nightmares snarl, their gimlet stares boring holes into his skin.

“The man I fell in love with is you, Pitch, all your darkness, all the parts of you that aren't so sweet and bright and happy, as well as all those that are. I caught a glimpse of someone I want to know, and if you're willing to let me, I'd like to try,” says Tooth, her amethyst eyes shining with sincerity.

He gulps. “You're... you're lying, no one ever-”

“I'm not!” defends Tooth passionately, “Look at me! Look at me, and tell me if I fear you finding the lie in me!”

Pitch does. His eyes are soft, buttery yellow, the same colour they are when she kisses him, the same colour they turn when she combs her fingers through his hair and whispers what she loves best. His dark hair tousles in the breeze, and his shadows in his robe stir, lazily, the way they sometimes do when his Fearlings get bored and stretch. The memories inspire her to withstand his searching stare.

The silence drags out for long minutes. Pitch watches her desperately, as if he is trying to uncover some vast secret, some great mocking trick in her eyes. But she is bereft of deceit, and the only things he finds is his own insecurity that bars him from even taking a step towards a chance.

Because Pitch Black will always be a monster, and monsters do not deserve to be loved or understood.

He drops the scythe. It collapses, formless, on the ice, and the Nightmares shriek in confused dismay, confused and possessive and furious at his weakness.

“I can't...” He is crying again. “I can't be what you want me to be... It hurts me! It hurts me to walk in the sun,” he gestures wildly upwards, to the pale eye of the wintry sun, “I am a creature of darkness, I am a monster, how could you ever look at me and then think that I am for someone like you? Toothiana – there is a reason we are on opposing sides of this war.”

“There is no war,” says Tooth, “save for the one we have created in ourselves through prejudice and ignorance. There is no reason we should fight. Don't you think a balance could be achieved so much faster if we all held onto one another instead of striving to push each other off? As much as you are a creature of darkness, you need the light too – don't scorn me, these years have proved it, we hurt you so very much, but don't you see? Tolerance and diversity is how we grow. We shouldn't push away those who are different.”

Her impassioned plea makes its mark on him, she can tell, because his arms cross tightly over his chest and his head bows, brows pulling down sharply in frustration, not with her but with himself.

He admits what he sees as weakness in a tight voice, hardened by loneliness and rejection. “I am so used to no one... I cannot fathom how to live with someone who... who cares if I die.” It is a blunt and callous admission, harsh and abrupt, but no less true for its awkwardness, and she respects his honesty.

Tooth smiles faintly. “I've got no better idea about how this is going to work than you do... But can we work it out together? As a team?”

He blinks at that, a little surprised, a little pleased, and his cheeks colour warmly as he thinks it over. In a faltering voice, he says, “I... I have never been part of a team before. You... you really don't mind all... _this?”_

Dismissively, he gestures to the wild Nightmares that slink around him, personifications of his own insecurity and fears, the shadows that cling to his body, evidence of a long-gone age's poison, the cuts that she can see already will scar, litter his frame like a battleground of flesh, a war that Pitch can never be parted from, one woven into his soul and blood as surely as memories are in hers.

Tooth feels herself smile wider, something soft mellowing her eyes as she teases, “What do you think, that cavern big enough for two?”

Pitch stares, and the sound that comes out is too rusty and old to be called a laugh, but it makes her giggle anyway, and lights up the shine in his beautiful eyes. He pauses, as if struck by an epiphany, and then his arm sweeps, like a triumphant general returned home. The Nightmares fall to dust, harmless black sand that eddies and swirls into the dark majesty that surrounds him, poisonous and intoxicating like sweetened rye.

Tooth gapes. He towers over her, swollen in power and pride, and offers her a cut-glass grin. He extends a hand, the confidence slipping to show something shyer underneath, to help her up.

Swallowing nervously, because this is new even if it feels right, Tooth shakily rises to her feet and takes a tentative step. Her small hand joins with his larger, grey one, and carefully, he interlocks their fingers.

Together, they step down into the darkness.

 


	12. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, so this is the end, folks. I hope you enjoyed all this as much as I enjoyed writing it for you.

Jack stumbles over tree-roots and into whole tree-trunks, cursing the darkness in brave tones that does nothing to hide the tremor in his voice. His pale hands grip the icy wood of his staff tightly, pointing it defensively at every dark pool of shadows. It is late evening, but it feels like midnight under the twisted canopy of the trees. Snow brushes the black trunks, winter's grip harsh and cruel on this frozen land.

Jack is being watched.

He knows it. He can feel it in the shiver running down his spine, the prickle on the back of his neck, the sweat that gathers under his arms and sticks his hoodie to his back, where it immediately crackles with ice. Every step he takes spreads timid-looking hoarfrost on the crunchy leaves, accompanied with the tinkling sound of snapping ice. His hair has long frozen over.

“Alright!” he finally shouts. “Enough of this! I know you're there!”

There is a low hiss of laughter from the shadows, and Jack whirls around, jumping in fright, catching sight of great, lamplike flaming yellow eyes from the shadows that fade away, taunting him.

Impulsively, the rattled snow spirit shoots a blast of frost out of his staff. A disembodied chuckle throbs out of the darkness from somewhere near his right, but when he turns, there is nothing there.

“Pitch!” Jack yells. “I know it's you! Very funny game, but you aren't scaring me!”

“ _...liar...”_ The shadows hiss, and Jack almost screams. In a manly way, of course.

He jerks backwards and trips over a protruding root, landing with a thud and a yelp on the cold, frosted ground. He whines and rubs his head. The yellow eyes stare at him from a dark gap between two trees, and childishly, Jack sticks his tongue out.

A fanged mouth cracks into a jagged, pearly grin underneath the two eyes, and Jack whistles, impressed rather than scared.

“Damn Pitch, that's some improvement. You been brushing every day or something?”

The chilling smile instantly disappears, and the golden eyes narrow.

Jack snickers and holds up his hands in mock-terror. “Ooh, Mr Boogeyman, don't eat me, please! I am only a simple shepherd boy!”

There is a pause, and then a disjointed hiss slithers out of the shadows. _“You have the simple part, certainly...”_

“Thanks!” beams Jack. He pauses. “Wait, did you just insult me?”

The white grin appears again.

Discomforted, Jack rubs the back of his neck. “You're such a creeper, man.”

“ _Thank you.”_ The grin stretches wider, pleased, if Jack is going to take a wild guess, at the perceived compliment.

“Sometimes that isn't such – you know what,” Jack promptly decides he is too young to die, and gets down to the business of why he actually came, all the way out into this helluva creepy forest filled with creepy shadows and Pitch being an utter _creeper_. “I'm not here to see you, Pitch. I wanna see Tooth.”

“ _You're not seeing me,”_ says Pitch logically, and blinks his great shining eyes.

“Are they like headlights?” Jack asks, distracted, “They look kinda like headlights.”

“ _No, obviously not,”_ says Pitch, offended.

Jack is about to reply with a witty comeback, but before he can a multicoloured blur shoots out of the darkness as if it is one with it and crashes into him high-speed. He grunts, the wind driven out of him, and suddenly flails, unable to breathe.

“Tooth!” he splutters, and she hushes him impatiently.

“Oh, they're _perfect!”_ she coos, “He has so much better teeth than _you_ Pitch, honestly, you should try harder to clean them – ooh, look how they shine! Pitch, come look!”

“No thank you,” Jack and Pitch say in tandem – well, Jack mumbles around Tooth's fingers in his mouth, Pitch purrs, rich and silky.

“Hi Tooth,” Jack manages to say once he's extracted her fingers from his mouth. “You're looking great.”

And she does, every feather perfectly preened, gleaming with gloss and health. Tooth blushes and pats down her feathers self-consciously. Her skin looks healthier, and her eyes shine with a happiness that seems almost contagious. She glances at the shadows, has a wordless conversation with the yellow, lamplike eyes watching them.

Silently, Pitch's form dissolves, and Jack can tell the moment he has gone, for the atmosphere immediately seems to brighten. He relaxes minutely.

“Are you okay, Tooth?” Jack asks her, quietly, seriously, and Tooth pats his hair tenderly, cracking some of the ice.

“Yes, Jack. I'm fine. We're fine.” She looks it, just as brilliant and bright as ever. Jack would never admit it, but he has feared that Pitch has... corrupted her somehow, changed Tooth to fit him. Instead he finds her happier, healthier than he has ever known her.

“Are... are you sure? He's only ever fought us before,” says Jack, but there's no way he can say that the truce has been anything but successful. Pitch hasn't caused trouble once, and Tooth's fairies as just as efficient as ever. The only holdback is, as ever, the Guardians' reluctance.

“All the memories in the world are worth nothing if we never learn from them,” Tooth tells him wisely, her eyes crinkling up as she grins. “Personal experience, you understand.”

“I just... He's Pitch! He's – well, he's the Boogeyman!” He protests, and she laughs a little, like he has just told a private joke.

She looks into the darkness between the trees and lifts her hand. A small spiral of dark sand uncoils from a tree root and becomes a tiny Nightmare raven, which swoops down to curl up in the palm of her hand. Fondly, Tooth strokes the sandy black feathers.

“He's not like you think he is, Jack. You know that fear protects and harms just as much as we do.”

Jack sighs. “I guess I can trust your judgement, Tooth. I'll give him a chance.” His mind is full of Antarctica, loneliness, ice and shadows. “But don't expect me to like, move in or anything, yet. The other Guardians agreed with me – so long as he doesn't hurt you, but if he does... all four of us have a shovel with his name on it and a competition on who can get there fastest.”

“I wouldn't expect you to understand,” Tooth chuckles softly, but her eyes are warm and tender with memory. She has had to learn to understand Pitch, too, and from experience she knows that it isn't easy to learn to accept someone as they truly are, to cast away all illusions of prior judgement and hatred. It is worth it, so very worth it, all the frustration at how long it has taken to truly understand Pitch Black's jagged edges, and where Tooth's might fit into them. “But it's not so bad under the bed after all.”

Down, deep in the darkness, the Watcher smiles.

* * *

 

_Adronitis - frustration with how long it takes to get to know someone._


End file.
